I must go away and begin all over again where no one knows me. But don’t worry about me. Wherever I am I shall not shame you. If I can’t earn food I shall not steal, but starve as quietly as I may. Yet I have a feeling that somewhere I shall make good; I owe that to you.
I shall love you and Sydney always. This is good-by to you both.
Max.
Billy stared at the others over the paper, and for a moment the room was quite still.
Mrs. Schmitz was in a brown study. Poor Sydney’s head was bowed, his face dark with self-accusation. The clock ticked noisily, and a proud rooster across the street, adding his voice to that of a laying hen, cackled with the vigor of a dozen cocks, Billy thought. From a spring-fed, marshy lot beyond, a bullfrog croaked suddenly. These sounds, usually unheeded, now thrust themselves upon Billy’s attention with insistence and annoyance.
“This will throw out the class play,” he said abruptly.
“That’s no great matter. You can alter it.”
Billy recognized Sydney’s impatience. “It is matter. I’ve built the whole play with Max in view for the leading character; and you to play up to him. His violin, too—why, there’s no one in the world but him to fit in right and do the part.”
“Write another play then,” Sydney exclaimed irritably.
Billy, not knowing the cause of Sydney’s impatience, turned in despair to Mrs. Schmitz. “Write a three-act play and coach it, in less than two months—and keep my place in class. And I’m expected with the play to win out for the Fifth Avenue High on the literary contest. Mumps! It beats the school! Don’t you see? If we don’t find Max we lose to one of the five other Highs; don’t you see?”