Sending
me books, eh? Tell her I like Dickens, will you? And, say, there's
_one_ book she needn't go to the trouble of sendin' me."
"You mean the--the Bible?"
"Yes."
"Dick, you don't really mean that. You--"
"I've already got one," said the prisoner simply. His eyes fell with
curious inconsistency. They saw his chin and lower lip quiver ever so
slightly. He scraped the floor with his foot a time or two, and his
fingers tightened on the bars. "It's a little one my mother gave me
when I was a kid. I've always kept it. Funny little old Bible, with
print so small you can't hardly read it, 'specially that place where
all them guys with the jay names were being begot. They seem to run
together a good deal--I mean the names. I guess they must have run
together considerable themselves, if accounts are true. Yes, my ma
gave it to me for being a good boy once."
His eyes were wet when he looked up at David's face again. His smile
seemed more twisted than usual.
"Where is it now, Dick?" asked Jenison, a lump coming into his throat.
Joey was plainly, almost offensively amazed.
"Why,--why, Ernie's got it.
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