Part 15 (1/2)

”What is she like?” Dora then demanded. ”What does she look like?”

”Don't ask me,” John smiled. ”I can't tell you. When we walk together she strikes me about here,” his hand on his left shoulder. ”She has blue eyes, brown wavy hair, a pretty mouth, and a nose with a cute little tilt to it. There are bits of brown freckles on her wrists and cheeks, but they don't matter. If anything, I like them. I wouldn't rub them off. Folks don't say she is pretty--even Sam don't; but why I can't see, for she is simply stunning, and you'll say so, kid, when you see her.”

”Well, I won't tell-- I won't tell,” Dora promised, returning with lowered interest to her rag things after the flight with him into his empyrean.

Here a voice sounded from the window of Mrs. Trott's room up-stairs.

”Dora, is that John down there?”

”Yes'm. He's just got back.”

”Well, tell him to come up here right away.”

The order did not need repeating. John stood up, the old practical frown settling on his face. ”I wonder what the ---- she wants?” he growled, with fierce emphasis on the omitted word. ”I thought she was asleep.”

”Come on up, John; I want to see you,” Mrs. Trott's querulous voice rang out again, and without replying he turned away. He wore his best suit of clothes, had recently shaved the fuzz from his face, and looked rather more manly than formerly as he strode through the doorway and up the rickety old stairs. Reaching the upper floor, he turned into his mother's room, unceremoniously pus.h.i.+ng the door open and standing on the threshold, just as Mrs. Trott, in a soiled wrapper, was getting back into bed after having been to the window. Her hair was in curl-papers, and the little bristling tufts gave to her face an uncouth, bleak look and left her penciled brows to a barren waste of forehead. Her cheeks were still rouged from the night before. A brazen necklace, recently doffed, had left dark streaks on her powdered bust.

”Why didn't you come on in?” Mrs. Trott demanded, irritably. ”What did you sit down there and talk with that brat for?”

”Oh, I don't know. What do you want?” He frowned in his turn, and all but growled.

Mrs. Trott kicked the light covering down over her feet and wadded the pillow so that her head was raised higher. ”I've been short of money ever since you went off,” she explained, pettishly. ”When you were here you always had some on Sat.u.r.day nights, but after you went off you didn't send as much and Jane and I both got in a hole.”

”Well, what do you want now?” he asked. ”How much?”

”I'll have to think,” Mrs. Trott said. ”I borrowed five from Jane yesterday. We were playing a little game and I lost. I was about to drop out when Jane backed me. I lost again. My luck was against me, and her, too. Jane needs the five. She is sick and will have to have a doctor.

You know they insist on cash--they won't come here, the silly fools, unless you shake the money in their faces, though they run the accounts of other people for years on a stretch.”

”I haven't got that much with me,” he gave in, wearily, ”but I'm going to the bank after dinner and will get it.”

”How much have you got there?” Mrs. Trott inquired.

”That's _my_ business, not yours,” he said, with an oath, for under that roof it had always seemed natural for him to swear. ”And don't you be nosing into my business, either. You went there once and tried to get money on my name, but don't you do it again. I've turned over a new leaf. I have to. You throw money away like water, on cards, whisky, beer, and what not. I can't keep that up, and I won't. I have to draw the line somewhere.”

She raised her head a little higher and fixed her eyes, in their puffy sockets, on him in a sort of groping wonder.

”Why, what has got into you?” she asked, stupidly, and all at once he seemed older to her, older and more dignified, more business-like, more like his dead father, to whom she had been flagrantly untrue.

”Common sense, I reckon,” he jerked out. ”If I've been a fool I don't always have to stay one. I'm going to need money--for myself, for my _own_ self, do you understand? I--I don't intend to live on here always, either. I'll be of age before long. I've thought it all over. I'm willing to set aside a reasonable amount to help you along, but I'm done with these big drafts on me.”

”John, what ails you?” There was a touch of shrinking fear in the almost childish appeal. ”You have never talked like this before.”

”Well, I might as well begin,” he sniffed. ”You have to be told. I've seen how other folks live away from here, and I want a change. I'm sick of it all--you and Jane and the gang you hang out with.”

”John Trott,” his mother gasped, ”you sha'n't talk to me this way. I won't stand it.”

”Well, then, think it all over,” he answered. ”I know my business. You can look out for yours. I know when I've had enough, and I _have_ had enough.”

He turned and left her. She heard him in his room, the sordid cubbyhole he had occupied since he was a child, and somehow now she pictured its narrow confines and condition as being unsuited to the new and unaccountable dignity into which he had grown in his short absence. What could it mean? What?