ain't no
good your buttin' in and telling me to cheer up and all that kinder
rot. No, sir, I just gotter gloom till it's all over."

"What have you got to 'gloom' for to-day?" ventured Lucien, "it's a
bright, cheery day; the sun is----"

"The sun might be the moon for all I care," interrupted William
impatiently. "I got up gloomy, and likely as not I'll go to bed
gloomy. Gee! this is a rotten world sometimes."

"Maybe you're ill," suggested Lucien.

"Ill nothing--don't you ever feel gloomy?"

"Not without good cause."

"Well, I'd just hate to be you. Sometimes a song, or somebody humming
a tune, sets me gloomin', or something I read, or sometimes it ain't
nothing at all that I could tell. It just comes and sticks around till
I don't know whether I'd sooner be a gloomer or a merry-ha-ha feller,
with a smile for everybody and everything. I uster get that way in
school sometimes, and I hated school bad enough, except the play time,
but I sometimes wish I was back again."

"Why?"

"How the dickens do I know? Don't you?"

"No--I've made up my mind to a business career, and----"

William broke in again. "Well, you cert'nly have your mind well
trained. If I had a mind like that, I'd take it out and dump it into
the Bay every once in a while."

"How could I do that? I'd have to commit suicide."

"Well, you're a living suicide anyway, with a mind like yours," said
William. "It's too regular, that's what it is."

They sat silent for a long time. Lucien was afraid to speak, and
William was just "glooming." He turned to his comrade at last, and
began, "Say, whenever I get the gloom on me, sooner or later I get to
thinkin' about the first day Pete went to school. That was two years
ago--and he's nine now, and maybe he don't like school. Say, he'd go
without a meal rather'n be late. He's got that medal bug in his brain
pan; you know the game, never late and good conduct for about seventeen
years, and you get a medal that's pretty to look at and no darn good to
help you get a job. There's one good thing about Pete though, even if
he is a kid." He paused.

"What is it?"

"He can fight. Say, Lucien, you'd oughter see him at it. Why, last
week he had three fights with one feller."

"What for?"

"Well, the guy licked him the first two times, and didn't know any
better than to go around and beef about it. So Pete tackled him again
and licked him good and plenty, and every day since then Pete ask