“How do you know what right I’ve got?” asked Sprague unmoved.
“Be careful what you say,” Jim was pale with anger, his fists clenching.
Mr. Sprague looked at his son with interest. Jim felt very young and at a disadvantage. He turned to go.
“Just see that you remember what I said,” Sprague commanded, as the boy reached the door.
Jim went out without a word. He went straight to Delia’s house.
“Who is it?” a voice demanded, as he knocked, forgetting to ring the bell.
“It’s Jim,” he replied.
The sound of bare feet in the hall was heard, and Delia, unlocking the door, pulled at his sleeve.
“Come in, Jim,” she whispered.
Jim began to explain his errand as soon as they reached the sitting room.
“Delia, we must be married at once,” he announced.
She was yawning, but stopped to gaze at him curiously. Jim returned her regard steadily. He was in deadly earnest. Her eyes avoided him but he continued to observe her hungrily. Her wrapper had fallen open at the neck and the swell of her full white breasts showed. Her hair was in two long braids.
“Why, Jim, what’s the matter? We’re all right as we are.” She yawned again.
“Something has happened, Delia. I owe it—that is, it is best for us to be—” He fell back on his first declaration. “We must be married right away.”
Delia went up to him and put her arms around his neck. Her loose sleeves slid back. As he looked down on her he could see only her white arms and bosom.
“People know. I’ve got you talked about,” he said as she kissed him.
Delia laughed.
“I don’t care about that,” she assured him.
Jim was puzzled.
“Come and sit down, dearie,” she added, pushing him into a chair and seating herself on his knees.
“But, Delia—”
“We can’t get married now, Jim,” she said. “You haven’t anything to support us and if I marry I’ll lose all the money Johnson left me.”
Jim’s face showed his revulsion of feeling. Delia saw the change and clung to him.
“Let’s just love each other, Jim, and everything will come out all right.”
“But, Delia, I want to do what’s right and—”
She kissed him passionately. Jim felt a curious sense of drifting.
“Come on, dearie,” she whispered.
It was late when Jim left the house.
Mr. Sprague said nothing more to Jim on the subject of Delia, which circumstance disconcerted and worried the boy more than he was willing to admit to himself.
He tried to consider the matter calmly but his thoughts seemed to dissolve in a mist of beautiful hair, wide opened blue eyes, and white arms and bosom.
“She is right,” he told himself. “We can’t marry now, and we love each other so much that we must be all in all to each other.”
However, his conscience made him very miserable. He felt that one who had no religion should be morally strong. With all this he continued to go to Delia’s house.
He did not understand why she designated certain evenings for his visits and forbade him to come on others. One evening, rather late, feeling very lonely and very much in love, he turned his steps toward her house, notwithstanding the fact that it was a proscribed day.
He had nearly reached the gate when a man emerged from the doorway, and Jim, halting beneath one of the large trees that shaded the sidewalk, recognized his father.
His first feeling was of anger that he was being spied upon, but this turned to amazement and cold rage as Delia called Sprague back and, through the half closed door, kissed him, straightening his hat which she had knocked awry, calling, “Good night, dearie,” as he went off.
Jim watched his father disappear, and, after a moment’s hesitation, walked away with rapid strides. He sought his home when it was daybreak.
The old standards by which Jim had measured values were of no more use to him.
XIII
Jim came to look at the world and people with clearer eyes. He saw that his father kept him in the store to save clerk hire and not with any intention of giving him a share in the business. He realized that he had no home or career in his native town. He thought matters out very carefully and fully.
One morning at breakfast, after reading a letter just received from John, the complacent tone of which threw his own forlornness into relief, he announced to his father that he was going away to college.
“You’re going to stay right where you are,” responded Mr. Sprague from his side of the table.
“No, I’m going,” repeated Jim quietly.
“Well, you won’t get a cent from me,” exclaimed his father with the air of saying the last word in an argument. “I suppose this is another of the fool notions you’ve got from that Winter boy.”
“I didn’t expect anything from you,” explained Jim.
Mr. Sprague passed one hand over his stubbly chin and regarded his son with cold curiosity. The elder Sprague was burly and inclined to stoop. He wore reading glasses and now he peered through them with as much detachment as an entomologist who has a mildly interesting insect under the microscope. He was, as usual, in his shirt sleeves, and his deliberate untidiness of dress seemed the aggressively flaunted signal of that coarseness of spirit which was a matter of pride with him.
“Don’t fool yourself into thinkin’ I don’t mean what I say,” he remarked.
A month after this incident Jim informed his father that he was leaving for college.
“Well, remember, you needn’t come back,” Mr. Sprague told him.
Jim went to the station alone, carrying a small bundle under his arm, and climbed on the car unnoticed. As the train pulled out of the place he looked back on the little town. This was his last glimpse of his childhood home.
He arrived at college with one suit of clothes, a few extra shirts and other accessories, and three dollars in his pocket, having borrowed the money from Dr. Winter, John’s father, to pay for his ticket. His first act
