"John D. Fitzgerald - The Great Brain At the AcademyUC - 4" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fitzgerald John D)

any more than a yellow-bellied coward has a yellow belly.
But you never saw such a bunch of envious kids in your
life.

When Tom came home for the Christmas vacation
with Sweyn he told Papa, Mamma, Aunt Bertha, our four-
year-old foster brother Frankie, and me all about riding in

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the locomotive from Provo to Salt I^ake City. Hearing him
tell it was ten times more exciting than reading about it.
Tom's great brain had already figured this out. He charged
the kids two cents apiece to enter our bam and listen to
him personally tell about his exciting experience. And
every kid in town from four years old to sixteen was there.

I, of course, had to get Sweyn's side of the story, which
was a little different from Tom's story. But by putting
both together I can tell just about exactly what did hap-
pen:

After collecting his three dollars from the grateful
poker players Tom went to the other end of the smoking
car and sat down beside the candy butcher. He collected
the seventy-five-cents worth of candy that the man owed
him.

"Why do they call you a butcher?" he asked.

"It is a show business slang word," the candy butcher
said. "In vaudeville and burlesque theaters men who sell
candy during intermission are called candy butchers.
When men began selling candy and things on trains the
name just stuck."

"I don't see how you make any money,*' Tom said.
"The train fare must eat up all the profits."

"I ride the trains free," the candy butcher said. "My
run is from Cedar City to Ogden and back."

Tom returned to his seat and dumped fifteen five-
cent bars of candy on it. "I made a deal with the candy
butcher," he told Sweyn. "He let me sell the rest of our
lunch if I'd buy candy with it. I got seventy-five cents."

"Half of that lunch was mine," Sweyn said. "You got
twenty cents from the salesman and seventy-five cents
more, which makes ninety-five cents. You can have the odd