The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside WorldVandercook, Margaret
General
The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World
Vandercook, Margaret
Camp Fire Girls -- Juvenile fiction
Anthony laughed. "Oh, yes, I waited
all right and I have been in that same
office more or less ever since, until I came
home to Woodford the day before yesterday.
Of course I meant to clear out as
soon as I had finished, but while I was
working I heard a quiet chuckle behind me,
and swinging around, there stood Mr. Andrews!"
"But who was or is this Mr. Andrews?"
Betty asked impatiently, too interested to
be particularly polite.
"My next best friend, after you," the
young fellow answered. "Why, I think I
can remember even now his very first
words to me: 'Hello,' he said, 'why are
you doing me such a good turn?' 'Because
you have just done me one. I slept all
night in your office,' I answered. He
didn't seem surprised and I thought that
rather funny. But afterwards I learned
that he had been a poor boy himself and
had slept in all sorts of queer places.
He is still poor enough, goodness knows,
but he has graduated in law and set
up an office. He will succeed some
day, sure as faith. You can bet on him."
Betty bit her lips, her eyes dancing with
amusement and curiosity. Actually her
visitor was becoming so much in earnest
over his friend that he was forgetting to
be afraid of her.
"But what about you and your success?"
she demanded.
The young man flushed, moving uncomfortably
in his chair, as though yearning to
get away from his questioner, and yet not
knowing exactly how.
"Success, _my_ success? I haven't yet
used that word in connection with myself.
I have just managed to keep on working,
that's about all. Mr. Andrews let me
continue sleeping in his office after I told him
my story and cleaning it to pay for my
lodging. Then by getting up early enough
I arranged to take care of a few others for
money and to run errands now and then.
I read in between times."
"Read? Read what?" Betty inquired
inexorably, half smiling and half frowning
at her own persistence. For somehow in
their half hour's talk together she had seen
something in Anthony Graham that made
her guess that the young man had worked
harder and dreamed better in this past
year than he was willing to acknowledge to her.
But Anthony got up from his chair and
began deliberately backing toward the door.
He seemed suddenly to have became more
awkward and self-conscious. "I read the
law books, as there wasn't anything else to
read. And I was determined to get more
education so that in the future Nan need
not be ashamed of me. Afterwards I
went to night school and----"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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