Amnesiacs -- Fiction; New York (State) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Trials -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"No, Grandma," he turned promptly, "I am not. I cram on facts. See? I
cut out all the frills and monkey and snail lore, and I root around
just enough Latin and mathematics to look good to the old-timers. All I
want is a diploma. See, so's I can walk into any chap's office and call
him Bill and look him in his Pie Rooky Beta Kipper eye and say, 'Now
then, my young Arabian Nights Oil Pasha, I may look like the One-eyed
Calendar, but I've got the same world-series, all-American learning
you've got, and I don't propose to be kicked out of this office till I
get what I came for, see?' That," said Dunstan mopping his brow, "is my
idea of education."
Minga nodded. "You sure do need an education in business," the girl
agreed thoughtfully. "I know the Mede keeps saying that if he had
his choice he'd give up his income and keep his brains, but not me,"
said serious Minga. "What use would my brains be to me if I hadn't an
income?"
"You gotter have brains all right," said Dunstan; "and then you've
gotter forget you got 'em or that anybody else has 'em. Look at the
after-dinner speeches, you know that rot, and the political ones, all
done by famous men; don't they prove that brains are only a side-show?
You just have 'em, but when you get there you don't use 'em. That's the
idea."
The bobbed head leaning seriously by the side of the cropped one to
swab the runners considered seriously these things.
Finally Minga announced, "Say, while I'm speaking of deep things and
all, I'm going home next week. After we snitch Terry from jail I'm
done!"
Dunstan looked at her sagely. He stood up, stretched, and eyed his
friend with increasing disapproval. "Pshaw, that's a new kind of slush;
what have you got, indigestion? Go home, nothing. Why, after the Terry
rescue----"
Minga rubbed solemnly on the running-board; her friend looked alarmed.
"You have not got to go home! What do the Mede and Persian care as
long as you're where they can send you day-letters and telephones. No,
ma'am, you've got to stay here in this house of the seven sleepers and
nobody-to-wash-cars, you've got to stay here and sass the governor and
shock Aunt Reely and keep Sard from eloping with the iceman and once in
a while, for deviltry, hold my hand. That's what you've got to do."
The boyish faun-like face smiled belligerently, but Dunstan's eyes had
subtle anxiety. "You haven't really to go?" he inquired. "Aw come on,
can't you start a new sweater and say you can't go home till you've
finished it? I've seen many a girl work that dodge," remarked Dunstan.
"On account of this being the only place you can match the wool," he
nodded acutely.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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