Unable any longer to endure the nauseous spectacle, Basil went up to the group and said, “Why, hello, Hube,” in as negligent a tone as he could command.
Hubert answered: “Why, hello, old—old Basil the Boozle,” and set the hat a different way on his head, until Basil himself couldn’t resist an unwilling chortle of laughter.
“Basil the Boozle! Hello, Basil the Boozle!” The cry circled the garden. Reproachfully he distinguished Riply’s voice among the others.
“Hube the Boob!” Basil countered quickly; but his ill humor detracted from the effect, though several boys repeated it appreciatively.
Gloom settled upon Basil, and through the heavy dusk the figure of Imogene began to take on a new, unattainable charm. He was a romantic boy and already he had endowed her heavily from his fancy. Now he hated her for her indifference, but he must perversely linger near in the vain hope of recovering the penny of ecstasy so wantonly expended this afternoon.
He tried to talk to Margaret with decoy animation, but Margaret was not responsive. Already a voice had gone up in the darkness calling in a child. Panic seized upon him; the blessed hour of summer evening was almost over. At a spreading of the group to let pedestrians through, he maneuvered Imogene unwillingly aside.
“I’ve got it,” he whispered. “Here it is. Can I take you home?”
She looked at him distractedly. Her hand closed automatically on the ring.
“What? Oh, I promised Hubert he could take me home.” At the sight of his face she pulled herself from her trance and forced a note of indignation. “I saw you going off with Margaret Torrence just as soon as I came into the yard.”
“I didn’t. I just went to get the ring.”
“Yes, you did! I saw you!”
Her eyes moved back to Hubert Blair. He had replaced his roller skates and was making little rhythmic jumps and twirls on his toes, like a witch doctor throwing a slow hypnosis over an African tribe. Basil’s voice, explaining and arguing, went on, but Imogene moved away. Helplessly he followed. There were other voices calling in the darkness now and unwilling responses on all sides.
“All right, mother!”
“I’ll be there in a second, mother.”
“Mother, can’t I please stay out five minutes more?”
“I’ve got to go,” Imogene cried. “It’s almost nine.”
Waving her hand and smiling absently at Basil, she started off down the street. Hubert pranced and stunted at her side, circled around her and made entrancing little figures ahead.
Only after a minute did Basil realize that another young lady was addressing him.
“What?” he demanded absently.
“Hubert Blair is the nicest boy in town and you’re the most conceited,” repeated Margaret Torrence with deep conviction.
He stared at her in pained surprise. Margaret wrinkled her nose at him and yielded up her person to the now-insistent demands coming from across the street. As Basil gazed stupidly after her and then watched the forms of Imogene and Hubert disappear around the corner, there was a low mutter of thunder along the sultry sky and a moment later a solitary drop plunged through the lamplit leaves overhead and splattered on the sidewalk at his feet. The day was to close in rain.
III
It came quickly and he was drenched and running before he reached his house eight blocks away. But the change of weather had swept over his heart and he leaped up every few steps, swallowing the rain and crying “Yo‑o‑o!” aloud, as if he himself were a part of the fresh, violent disturbance of the night. Imogene was gone, washed out like the day’s dust on the sidewalk. Her beauty would come back into his mind in brighter weather, but here in the storm he was alone with himself. A sense of extraordinary power welled up in him, until to leave the ground permanently with one of his wild leaps would not have surprised him. He was a lone wolf, secret and untamed; a night prowler, demoniac and free. Only when he reached his own house did his emotion begin to turn, speculatively and almost without passion, against Hubert Blair.
He changed his clothes, and putting on pajamas and dressing-gown descended to the kitchen, where he happened upon a new chocolate cake. He ate a fourth of it and most of a bottle of milk. His elation somewhat diminished, he called up Riply Buckner on the phone.
“I’ve got a scheme,” he said.
“What about?”
“How to do something to H. B. with the S. D.”
Riply understood immediately what he meant. Hubert had been so indiscreet as to fascinate other girls besides Miss Bissel that evening.
“We’ll have to take in Bill Kampf,” Basil said.
“All right.”
“See you at recess tomorrow. … Good night!”
IV
Four days later, when Mr. and Mrs. George P. Blair were finishing dinner, Hubert was called to the telephone. Mrs. Blair took advantage of his absence to speak to her husband of what had been on her mind all day.
“George, those boys, or whatever they are, came again last night.”
He frowned.
“Did you see them?”
“Hilda did. She almost caught one of them. You see, I told her about the note they left last Tuesday, the one that said, ‘First warning, S. D.,’ so she was ready for them. They rang the backdoor bell this time and she answered it straight from the dishes. If her hands hadn’t been soapy she could have caught one, because she grabbed him when he handed her a
