"I suppose we'd be laughing yet or else dead of it, only Tommy came in. He took one look around and his face got awful white. He asked me something, but I could only sputter, then he tried the Scotchman, but he only rolled some more—gee! it makes me giggle to think of it. So Tommy rushed to the 'phone and called up a doctor, and then he ran out of the store and got a cop, and when he gets him in he says to the cop, 'They're dying,' and the cop says, 'Like blazes they're dying,' he says. So that got me going worse than ever, and the cop was beginning to snicker too. So he pulls out his baton and he yells out, 'I'll knock the block off the first yap that lets out another laugh,' and he gives the Englishman a poke in the slats to show he meant it. And you bet we quit on the spot. Me, I made a grand sneak the minute I found I could stand straight, and just as I'm getting out, in rushes a doctor. Tommy told me after he had to give the doctor four dollars, but the money was nothing to the way he sweated trying to explain.
"The next time I write I hope it'll be better written. I've found a place where I can take night lessons three times a week in history and reading and writing, and you bet I'm taking them.
"With best wishes to everybody and hoping George is getting along all right with his courting.
"W. A. T.
"P.S.—Lucien is showing me how to box every chance we get."
William deliberately omitted from his letter a conversation with Miss Whimple regarding Sally. He had made a special journey to see the lady because he remembered hearing her say something about wonderful cures at a certain hospital to the work of which she had given time and money. She heard him through, touched by the depth of his feeling for the sufferer, and promised to make inquiries of the surgical staff as to what could be done.
"Don't be too hopeful, William," she said, kindly, "they cannot really tell until they see the patient. But they've done almost everything except furnish new spines; and goodness knows there are many people who ought to have them if they could be made. There are too many jellyfish men and women in the world to-day, William."
CHAPTER XXIII
Reformations are slow—except when they're sudden. Some reformations—of individuals as well as nations—have followed upon years of effort, toil, and suffering: others have been materially accelerated by the use of the axe. William's acquaintance with the axe was limited to its use as an instrument for occasional spells of firewood-chopping: but at heart he was a reformer, and, unlike most reformers—judging them, of course, by the doubtful value of histories—he started upon himself. Tenacity was William's greatest asset; when he adopted a line of action he "stayed with it," to use his own expressive phraseology. Having found the place spoken of in the letter to Sally, where he could take night lessons in history, reading, and writing, William became an attentive and consistent attendant. Tommy Watson and Whimple were fearful lest he should undertake too much, finally tire of everything, and lapse into a drifter. Epstein ridiculed their fears and scorned their arguments. "Leave the boy alone," he said, "he knows what he wants, and he'll get it."