Page 66 - 1938

“Who takes you to school this mornin’?” she inquires. There it is. Josephine’s al­ ways on time with that one—right with the egg. I go to school the same way every morning, but it wouldn’t be right if she didn’t ask.
“We take," 1 sigh and then, searching the headlines of the Herald Tribune while Jo slowly reads aloud the weather in the Times, 1 ask, “Any mail yet?”
“No, lie's late again. Say, Jean Barlow,” she begins with a swallow, sitting down in a chair, “Who was the lady in the green dress who was to dinner last night?”
I tell her absently.
“Oh,” she replies, repeating the name so that it sounds like a disease. “She’s gettin’ old, isn’t she?”
"1 don’t know; is she?” I ask, between two nasty tastes of egg.
' Doesn’t eat much, jist nibbles. I don’t like a person like that. She’s got a right to her own ideas,—but me, I’d eat me vittals. Suren’ I would. She didn’t touch the chicken and took no potatoes,” criticizes Jo in an agreeable tone.
"Huh, maybe she had a bad stomach—don’t know as I blame her when she had to listen to that music all afternoon on a stiff-backed wooden chair,” I think out loud.
“O well, Jeanie, there’s some people likes that sort o’ thing.”
“Look, fifty thousand Chinese killed in two weeks.”
“The poor things. They’re havin' a war over there, aren’t they?”
“No, don’t let anyone kid you. That’s the way they celebrate New Year’s,” I rudely answer.........“Yes, they're having a war with Japan.”
"How do they tell each other apart? Glad I’m not there. Here comes Janie— ’bout time. Say, you’d better be gettin’ to school—quarter after eight,” she says glibly, looking at the clock whose hands point to eight.
“I’m going, but here’s the mail.”
A swift breeze enters as we both open the door. Jo and the mailman decide about the weather, and in the process thoroughly air the house. The topic settled, he departs, and we sort the letters.
“Any for me?” she asks patiently.
“Yes, your life insurance,” I give it to her, but before reading it, she tears it up.
“Why the divil are people so dumb? I’m not dead yit.” JUNIOR'SENIOR PRIZE STORY
J. B„ ’40.
“WE, WHO WERE ABOUT TO DIE—”
“Mrs. MacAire is almost cooked now,” I heard some one say, and a shudder of dis­ gust ran through me, not so much at the “cooking” of Mrs. MacAire—though she, poor lady, was soon to have my heartfelt sympathy—but disgust at myself for having got my­ self into the position I was now in.
“And this,” I thought grimly to myself, “is the thing that a year ago today I vowed I would never do !”
It had all started when some very frank relative had remarked that I had “a very skinned look” about me, and when I, on going to the mirror, had decided she was right.
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