I. THE BIG RIVER

I guess if teachers always knew how lickings were going to turn out they wouldn’t lick us fellows so much. I am thinking about Miss Murphy, the one that taught the room me and Swatty and Bony was in, and about the time she was going to lick Swatty. One of the times. There were plenty of others.

You see, me and Swatty and Bony is chums, and we go together mostly, but this was when we was in Miss Murphy’s room. She’s a good-looker, but she’s a tartar, too, when it comes to licking.

The way of it was this: My sister Fan was mushy over Swatty’s brother Herb and she didn’t care who knew it, because they were engaged, and Fan was fixing up her things to get married in, and she wished I was a girl so I could be her flower girl at the wedding, but she didn’t know what she’d do with me. She thought maybe she’d lock me in the cellar, she said, but she didn’t mean it. She was always codding me and Swatty. She’d cod us that way, and then she’d give us a dime or something. She was all right, and Swatty thought so too.

So then Fan and Herb had a fight, like girls and fellows always do have; but this was a good one. It was because Herb said maybe Fan would like to have Miss Murphy for a bridesmaid, and Fan got mad because Herb had gone with Miss Murphy once. So then Fan wouldn’t forgive Herb. Herb came over and fought for three evenings, and then Swatty brought a note from him to Fan, and I took one from Fan to Herb, and that was the end of it. The note I took had a ring in it, because I could feel it. Then Fan just moped around the house and cried some, and after a while Herb had to go and teach the eighth grade at school, because Professor Martin broke his leg on the ice the janitor ought to have scraped off t