Butler Ellis Parker
Swatty: A Story of Real Boys
XIV. HERB BESTIRS
Well, the first thing Herb Schwartz did was to ask me and Swatty to go down to Judge Hannan’s office after school one day and we went. Bony didn’t go because Herb didn’t want him to, and when we went in the office Herb was sitting at a desk and he turned around in his chair and told us to sit down. So we did. We thought maybe the first thing he would tell us was that we were doomed and plumb goners, and how many years we’d have to be in reform school, but he didn’t. He looked at me and said:
“Well, George, how is your sister Frances?”
“She’s pretty good, I guess,” I told him.
“That’s nice,” he said. “And how do you like having that Burton fellow of hers bestirring himself around to put you in reform school.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I don’t like it very well.”
“I shouldn’t think you would,” he said. “But I suppose your sister Frances likes it.”
“She does not!” I said.
“That’s strange,” he said. “She thinks you are a totally depraved young reprobate, don’t she? It seems to me that the last conversation I had with her she said that, or words to that effect. I supposed she was the one that set that Burton fellow on you.”
“No, she didn’t!” I said. “My mother did.”
“Oh! your mother did, did she?” Herb asked, but he grinned.
“No, she didn’t either,” I said. “All she did was to get Tom Burton to bestir himself, so Dad Veek wouldn’t go to jail or anything. She didn’t know he was going to bestir himself against me and Swatty. My mother don’t want me to go to reform school. And Fan don’t.”
So then Herb asked Swatty if, for goodness’ sake! he couldn’t sit still without knocking his heels against his chair. Then he said to me:
“Is it possible that your sister believes you are capable of regeneration?”
“I don’t know what it is,” I told him, “but I guess so.”
“I mean,” Herb said, “she thinks there may be some good in you after all, does she?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
So then he laughed and shook his head as if it was funny. I guess I knew why. I guess it was because the reason Fan had thrown his ring at him was because he said I was some good and she said I wasn’t, and now she thought the way he thought.
Then Herb sobered up and asked about the fire and we told him everything, even about the Red Avengers. He asked questions and we answered them, and he seemed to know almost more about it than we did. He knew about what we told Toady Williams when we were just bragging and that we had bragged that we had set the barn afire.
“But that was just pretend,” I said.
“A mighty bad kind of pretend,” Herb said, and he asked us some more questions. He would look at some papers on his desk and then ask some more questions. When he got through asking he said: “Well, if the case has to go into court Mr. Rascop will defend you two young rascals, and if the case comes before Judge Hannan I think you’ll have every chance that can be hoped for, but I don’t like the looks of things. Judge Hannan knows what boys are, but if the case goes before some old stiff it is going to be hard to make him think your brag to Toady Williams was just pure brag. At the best it looks as if one of you two must have dropped a com-silk cigarette stub in the shavings. You two had better walk straight and keep out of trouble from now on. I’ll do what I can for you.”
So we went out and we were pretty scared. We didn’t say much. We just walked along for a while. Then Swatty said:
“Say! I know who wrote all those questions Herb asked us.”
“Who did?” I asked him.
“Fan did,” he said, “because I saw what Herb was reading from, and I saw the last page and it said, ‘Yours humbly, Frances.’”
So that was how Herb knew so much about it, because I had told Fan and she had told Herb in the letter. At first I was pretty mad that she should be a tattle-tale but then I guessed that was how she was bestirring herself, because it didn’t do any good to bestir with Tom Burton.
When I got home it was almost supper time but Fan came to the front porch when she heard me and asked me if I had seen Herb, and all about it, and I told her.
“Well, Georgie,” she said, “I’ll stick by you through thick and thin,” and then she began to cry and ran into the house, and I went in and mother stopped me in the hall.
“George,” she said, “this is a terrible affair and I don’t know what will be the end of it, but if I could give my life to keep you from harm I would gladly do so. And, whatever comes of it, you must be tender to Fan, because she quarreled with Herb because of you and now she has quarreled with Tom, and she loves you very much,” or something like that.
So I felt pretty mean, because a boy don’t like that kind of talk, and when I went upstairs and Lucy was coming down I gave her a push. She said: “You stop that! Are you and Swatty going to reform school?”
“None of your business,” I told her.
“Oh! you don’t need to think I’d ask you, smarty!” she said. “I don’t care. I only asked you because Mamie Little asked me to ask you.”
So then I felt how awful it would be to go to reform school and everything and I went up to my room and cried on my bed. I was up there, but mostly done crying, when my father came up. He put his hand on me and said:
“Here, now! None of this, old sport. Buck up! We’ll get you out of this all right, some way. Come on down to supper.”
So then he kissed me. He hadn’t kissed me for a long time before that, because men don’t, but it was all right this time. I went down to supper like he said.
Well, Herb and my father and Swatty and me had a meeting nearly every night in our dining-room and talked about how we were getting along, but we weren’t getting along very much. The only thing that got along was Fan, and she was making up to Herb again. She would come into the dining-room and sit and talk to Herb and father, but she couldn’t fool me. She was making up to Herb all right. I could see that.
Well, one day Tom Burton came over to our house and Fan and Tom Burton had a regular row. It was a dandy. And that settled Tom, I guess. He never came to our house again.
Me and Swatty had to go to school just the same as ever. I wished, if they were going to send us to reform school they would go ahead and do it, because Miss Carter began to get mean to us. Professor Martin was back and nearly every day Miss Carter kept us in school and Professor Martin came in and talked to her while she kept us in. Mostly they walked home together, because me and Swatty saw them.
Well, me and Swatty had been sort of mad at Bony, like I told you, but you can’t keep mad always, and we started to letting him be with us again. So one day me and Swatty and Bony got out of school late, because Miss Carter had kept us in, and Scratch-Cat had been kept in, too. We all came out of the schoolhouse together. It was almost spring again and Bony had some marbles he had bought, so we said:
“Let’s play marbles.”
Scratch-Cat didn’t want to.
“Well, you don’t have to,” Swatty told her. “You’re a girl, anyway. What do you want to play?”
“I don’t want to play anything,” she said. “I’ve got a better game than a play-game, and you can be in it if you want to.”
“What is it, then?” Swatty asked.
“Secret society,” Scratch-Cat said. “I thought it all up in school to-day and it’s Gypsies. Swatty will be the king and I’ll be the queen, and Georgie and Bony can be princes, and we ‘ll take an oath to be mean to Miss Carter or anybody that keeps us in school or anything. We’ll think up things to do to them, and when Miss Carter and Professor Martin are married we’ll steal their children and raise them to be gypsies – ”
“Aw!” I said, “they ain’t going to be married.”
“Yes, they are!” Scratch-Cat said. “Because I saw him kiss her. He kissed her in the cloak room almost before I was out of it, just now.”
“Well, we ain’t going to be secret gypsies or any secret society,” Bony said, “because me and Swatty and Bony have one already.”
“No, we haven’t,” Swatty said.
“We have, too!” Bony said. “We’ve got the Red Aven – ”
He stopped pretty short, you bet.
“No, we haven’t,” Swatty said again. “We never had. We had a meeting and voted that there wouldn’t be any Red Avengers any more and that there never had been.”
“But – but you couldn’t,” Bony said.
“Yes, we could,” Swatty said. “We started it and I guess we had a right to stop it. Me and Georgie we voted on it. There never was any Red Avengers. And I’ll lick anybody that says there was.”
“But – but don’t we have to be true to the oath any more?” Bony asked.
“Pooh, no!” Swatty said. “When there ain’t any Red Avengers there ain’t any Red Avengers’ oath, or nothing.”
“And can’t anybody put me in state’s prison for saying what the oath says I mustn’t tell about any Red Avenger?” asked Bony.
“No, sir!” said Swatty. “That oath is a dead oath and don’t count no more.”
“Well, then,” Bony said. “Toady did it!”
“Did what?” Swatty asked.
“Toady set the barn afire,” Bony said, still pretty scared. “I couldn’t tell, because I took oath not to tell on any Red Avenger, but if there ain’t any oath Toady did it. I saw him. He had a pack of real cigarettes and he didn’t dare smoke while he was skating because Miss Carter was skating on the creek, too.
“So I guess Toady thought he would go up to the Nest to have a smoke,” Bony went on, “and I was going home. So when we got up to the Nest he asked me if I wanted to smoke a real cigarette, and I said I didn’t. So Toady lit one and threw down the match, and it set the shavings afire. So he tried to stamp the fire out, but it spread too fast, and so he ran, and I ran, and when we looked back the barn was all afire. So he said that if I ever told he would have me sent to state’s prison for breaking the Red Avengers’ oath and telling on a fellow comrade. But he did it, and I saw him do it.”
Well, Swatty got up and gave a yell and he had to hit some one, so he hit Scratch-Cat, and she went for him and they had a good fight, but Swatty was laughing all the time, and he didn’t fight as hard as he mostly did. When they got through fighting they shook hands, and we all went down to Herb’s and he listened to what we had to tell him.
That ended it, except that he sent the engagement ring back to Fan in a letter and she kept it, and Mr. Williams, who was Toady’s father, moved out of town mighty quick and took Toady with him, because Herb telephoned him right away and I guess he thought he had better do it.
So that’s all. Me and Swatty didn’t go to reform school. We didn’t go anywhere. The only others that went anywhere were Herb and Fan. They went on a marriage trip, or whatever you call it.
