The Story of Sugar | Page 2

harder down here. I know my father is sore on it, and every
time he writes I mean to take a brace and do better--honest I do, no
kidding. But you know how it goes. Somebody wants me on the ball
nine, or on the hockey team, or in the next play, and I say yes to every
one of them. The first I know I haven't a minute to study and then I get
ragged on the exams.
"You are too popular for your own good, Van. No, I'm not throwing
spinach, straight I'm not. What I mean is that everybody likes you. Why,
there isn't a more popular boy in the school! That's why you get pulled
into every sort of thing that's going. It's all right, too, only if you expect
to study any you've got to rise up in your boots and take a stand. That's
why I shut myself up and grind regularly part of every evening. I don't
enjoy doing it, but it's the only way."
Van rose and began to roam round the room uneasily.
"Goodness knows, Bobbie, if one of us didn't grind neither of us would
get anywhere. By the way, did you manage to dig out that Caesar for
to-morrow? Fire away and give me the product of your mighty brain. I
guess I can memorize the translation if you read it to me enough times."
Bob did not reply.
"Well?"
"I don't think it is a straight thing for me to translate your Latin for you
every day, Van," he said at last. "You ought not to ask me to do it."
"I know it; it's mighty low down--I acknowledge that," answered Van

frankly. "But what would you have me do? Flunk it? Come on. I'll get
it myself next time."
"That's what you always say, Van, but you never do."
"But I tell you I will. This week I've been so rushed with the Glee Club
rehearsals I couldn't do a thing. But you wait and view yours truly next
week."
Reluctantly Bob took up his Caesar and opened it.
"That's a gentleman, Bobbie. Some time when you're drowning I'll
throw a plank to you. I knew you'd save my life."
"I do not approve of doing it at all," Bob observed, still searching for
the place in the much worn brown text-book. "I've done about all your
studying this term."
"I own it, oh Benefactor. Are you not my brain--my intellectual
machinery? Could I live a day without you?"
Leaning across the table Van affectionately rumpled up Bob's tidy
locks until every individual hair stood on end.
"If it weren't for me you'd be dropped back into the next class--that's
what would happen to you; and you deserve it, too."
Van was silent.
"I know it. I haven't put in an hour of solid work for a month, Bob I
ought to be ashamed, and I am." He paused. "But there's no use
jumping all over myself if I haven't," he resumed, shifting to a more
sprightly tone. "I've said I was going to take a spurt soon and I mean it.
I'll begin next week."
"Why not start to-day?"
There was a rap at the door.

"Why not?" echoed Van, moving toward the door with evident relief.
"Don't you see I can't? Somebody's always breaking in on my work.
Here's somebody this very minute."
He flung open the door.
"Mail. A parcels-post package for you, Bob. I'll bet it's eats. Your
mother's a corker at sending you things; I wish my mother sent me
something now and then."
"Well, it's a little different with you. Your family live so far out west
they can't very well mail grub to you; but Mater is right here in New
York, and of course as she's near by she'd be no sort of a mother if she
didn't send me something beside this prison fare. Come on and see
what it is this time."
Bob loosened the string from the big box and began unwinding the
wrappings.
"Plum-cake!" he cried. "A dandy great loaf! And here's olives, and
preserved ginger, and sweet chocolate. She's put in salted almonds, too;
and look--here's a tin box of Hannah's molasses cookies, the kind I used
to like when I was a kid. Isn't my mother a peach?"
"She sure is; and she must think a lot of you," said Van slowly. "I wish
my mother'd ever--"
"Maybe if you pitched in a little harder here she'd feel--"
"Oh, cut out the preaching, Bobbie," was the impatient retort. "I've had
enough for one day."
Bob did not speak, but tore open the letter that had come with the
bundle.
"Oh, listen to this, Van," he shouted excitedly. "Mother says they have
decided to open the