The responsibility of his new maturity impelled Riply to appear most eager. “All right with me,” he said heartily.
He looked at Basil.
“All right with me,” mumbled Basil.
Riply laughed, more from nervousness than from derision. “Maybe you better grow up first, Basil.” He looked at Elwood, seeking approval. “You better stick around till you get to be a man.”
“Oh, dry up!” retorted Basil. “How long have you had yours? Just a week!”
But he realized that there was a gap separating him from these two, and it was with a sense of tagging them that he walked along beside.
Glancing from right to left with the expression of a keen and experienced frontiersman, Elwood Leaming led the way. Several pairs of strolling girls met his mature glance and smiled encouragingly, but he found them unsatisfactory—too fat, too plain or too hard. All at once their eyes fell upon two who sauntered along a little ahead of them, and they increased their pace, Elwood with confidence, Riply with its nervous counterfeit and Basil suddenly in the grip of wild excitement.
They were abreast of them. Basil’s heart was in his throat. He looked away as he heard Elwood’s voice.
“Hello, girls! How are you this evening?”
Would they call for the police? Would his mother and Riply’s suddenly turn the corner?
“Hello, yourself, kiddo!”
“Where you going, girls?”
“Nowhere.”
“Well, let’s all go together.”
Then all of them were standing in a group and Basil was relieved to find that they were only girls his own age, after all. They were pretty, with clear skins and red lips and maturely piled up hair. One he immediately liked better than the other—her voice was quieter and she was shy. Basil was glad when Elwood walked on with the bolder one, leaving him and Riply to follow with the other, behind.
The first lights of the evening were springing into pale existence; the afternoon crowd had thinned a little, and the lanes, empty of people, were heavy with the rich various smells of pop corn and peanuts, molasses and dust and cooking Wienerwurst and a not-unpleasant overtone of animals and hay. The Ferris wheel, pricked out now in lights, revolved leisurely through the dusk; a few empty cars of the roller coaster rattled overhead. The heat had blown off and there was the crisp stimulating excitement of Northern autumn in the air.
They walked. Basil felt that there was some way of talking to this girl, but he could manage nothing in the key of Elwood Leaming’s intense and confidential manner to the girl ahead—as if he had inadvertently discovered a kinship of tastes and of hearts. So to save the progression from absolute silence—for Riply’s contribution amounted only to an occasional burst of silly laughter—Basil pretended an interest in the sights they passed and kept up a sort of comment thereon.
“There’s the six-legged calf. Have you seen it?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“There’s where the man rides the motorcycle around. Did you go there?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Look! They’re beginning to fill the balloon. I wonder what time they start the fireworks.”
“Have you been to the fireworks?”
“No, I’m going tomorrow night. Have you?”
“Yes, I been every night. My brother works there. He’s one of them that helps set them off.”
“Oh!”
He wondered if her brother cared that she had been picked up by strangers. He wondered even more if she felt as silly as he. It must be getting late, and he had promised to be home by half-past seven on pain of not being allowed out tomorrow night. He walked up beside Elwood.
“Hey, El,” he asked, “where we going?”
Elwood turned to him and winked. “We’re going around the Old Mill.”
“Oh!”
Basil dropped back again—became aware that in his temporary absence Riply and the girl had linked arms. A twinge of jealousy went through him and he inspected the girl again and with more appreciation, finding her prettier than he had thought. Her eyes, dark and intimate, seemed to have wakened at the growing brilliance of the illumination overhead; there was the promise of excitement in them now, like the promise of the cooling night.
He considered taking her other arm, but it was too late; she and Riply were laughing together at something—rather, at nothing. She had asked him what he laughed at all the time and he had laughed again for an answer. Then they both laughed hilariously and sporadically together.
Basil looked disgustedly at Riply. “I never heard such a silly laugh in my life,” he said indignantly.
“Didn’t you?” chuckled Riply Buckner. “Didn’t you, little boy?”
He bent double with laughter and the girl joined in. The words “little boy” had fallen on Basil like a jet of cold water. In his excitement he had forgotten something, as a cripple might forget his limp only to discover it when he began to run.
“You think you’re so big!” he exclaimed. “Where’d you get the pants? Where’d you get the pants?” He tried to work this up with gusto and was about to add: “They’re your father’s pants,” when he remembered that Riply’s father, like his own, was dead.
The couple ahead reached the entrance to the Old Mill and waited for them. It was an off hour, and half a dozen scows bumped in the wooden offing, swayed by the mild tide of the artificial river. Elwood and his girl got into the front seat and he promptly put his arm around her. Basil helped the other girl into the rear seat, but, dispirited, he offered no resistance when Riply wedged in and sat down between.
They floated off, immediately entering upon a long echoing darkness. Somewhere far ahead a group in another boat were singing, their voices now remote and romantic, now nearer and yet more mysterious, as the canal doubled back and the boats passed close to each other with an invisible veil between.
The three boys yelled and called, Basil attempting by his vociferousness and variety to outdo Riply in the girl’s eyes, but after a few moments there was
