Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

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Butler Ellis Parker. Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

I. THE BIG RIVER

II. MAMIE’S FATHER

III. THE “DIVORCE”

IV. THE STUMP

V. SCRATCH-CAT

VI. THE CARDINAL’S SIGNET RING

VII. THE HAUNTED HOUSE

VIII. WASTED EFFORT

IX. THE MURDERERS

X. SLIM FINNEGAN

XI. “THIEF! THIEF!”

XII. THE RED AVENGERS

XIII. THE ICE GOES OUT

XIV. HERB BESTIRS

Отрывок из книги

I guess this is a good time to tell about Mamie Little, because now you know who me and Swatty and Bony are. Mamie Little was my girl, only she didn’t know it. Nobody knew it but me. It was a secret I had. That’s the way a fellow has a girl at first: she’s a secret and she don’t know she’s his girl. Sometimes she don’t never get to know it and the fellow has to get another girl. But while he “has” her the fellow knows it, and it makes him feel bashful and uncomfortable and frightened when she is near by and it is pretty bully.

The reason I picked out Mamie Little for my girl was because she had the nicest eyes and nicest hair of any girl I ever saw and the way she swished her dress when she walked. She lived across the street from my house and mostly played with my sister Lucy. So when I played with Lucy I could play with Mamie Little, too, and nobody would think it was because she was my girl. They would think I was just playing with my sister.

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Me and Swatty and Bony kept backing away as the fire came toward us. Sometimes we would turn, and run. We backed away as far as ten city blocks would be, I guess, before we were where we did not have to back away any more. We forgot all about school, and about fishing, and about everything. It was the kind of fire where nobody thinks of going home until it is all over.

It was about two o’clock when the people in front and the firemen in front of them gave a sort of roar, as if they were a lot of animals, and everybody crowded back. The firemen on top of the sash and door factory ran from one edge of the roof to the other, looking down. Two of them jumped off. They were killed, but the others got down the ladders, and the next minute the factory and its oil house were all afire at once – just sort of spouted fire from all the windows as if the fire had been all fixed to break out that way.

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