I swung on the younger boy. “What did I do then?” I demanded. “I’ll bet you’ve got a lot of
theories. Come on, reconstruct the crime. There we were at the tree. Then what happened,
Sherlock Holmes?”
His eyes swung guiltily back and forth. “Then you just pushed him off, I’ll bet.”
“Lousy bet,” I said offhandedly, falling into a chair as though losing interest in the game. “You
lose. I guess you’re Dr. Watson, after all.”
They laughed at him a little, and he squirmed and looked guiltier than ever. He had a very weak
foothold among the Butt Room crowd, and I had pretty well pushed him off it. His glance
flickered out at me from his defeat, and I saw to my surprise that I had, by making a little fun of
him, brought upon myself his unmixed hatred. For my escape this was a price I was willing to
pay.
“French, French,” I exclaimed. “Enough of this contretemps. I’ve got to study my French.” And I
went out.
Going up the stairs I heard a voice from the Butt Room say, “Funny, he came all the way down
here and didn’t even have a smoke.”
But this was a clue they soon seemed to forget. I detected no Sherlock Holmes among them, nor
even a Dr. Watson. No one showed any interest in tracking me, no one pried, no one insinuated.
The daily lists of appointments lengthened with the rays of the receding autumn sun until the
summer, the opening day, even yesterday became by the middle of October something gotten out
of the way and forgotten, because tomorrow bristled with so much to do.
In addition to classes and sports and clubs, there was the war. Brinker Hadley could compose his
Shortest War Poem Ever Written
The War
Is a bore
if he wanted to, but all of us had to take stronger action than that. First there was the local apple
crop, threatening to rot because the harvesters had all gone into the army or war factories. We
spent several shining days picking them and were paid in cash for it. Brinker was inspired to
write his Apple Ode
Our chore
Is the core
of the war