Booth Tarkington

“ It had grown to be a bond uniting them; they were not so much rivals as ardent novices serving a single altar, each worshiping there without visible gain over the other. Each had even come to possess, in the eyes of his two fellows, almost a sacredness as a sharer in the celestial glamor; they were tender one with another. They were in the last stages.
Johnnie Watson had with him to-day a visitor of his own—a vastly overgrown person of eighteen, who, at Johnnie's beckoning, abandoned a fair companion of the moment and came forward as William entered the gate. ”

“ On the wonderful evening of their first meeting William and Miss Pratt had cozily arranged to be called, respectively, “Ickle boy Baxter” and “Cousin Lola.” (Thus they had broken down the tedious formalities of their first twenty minutes together.)
“Don't you think love is sacred?” he repeated in the deepest tone of which his vocal cords were capable.
“Ess,” said Miss Pratt.
“I do!” William was emphatic. “I think love is the most sacred thing there is. I don't mean SOME kinds of love. I mean REAL love. You take some people, I don't believe they ever know what real love means. ”

“ Genius had burst forth from his despair; necessity had become a mother again, and William's collar was in place. It was tied there. Under his necktie was a piece of string.
He had lost count of time, but he was frantically aware of its passage; agony was in the thought of so many rich moments frittered away; up-stairs, while Joe Bullitt and Johnnie Watson made hay below. And there was another spur to haste in his fear that the behavior of Mrs. Baxter might not be all that the guest of honor would naturally expect of William's mother. As for Jane, his mind filled with dread ”

“ He would go to her, and she would take him by the hand, and lead him to her father, and say, “Father, this is William.”
But William would turn to her, and, with the old, dancing light in his eyes, “No, Lola,” he would say, “not William, but Ickle Boy Baxter! Always and always, just that for you; oh, my dear!”
And then, as in story and film and farce and the pleasanter kinds of drama, her father would say, with kindly raillery, “Well, when you two young people get through, you'll find me in the library, where I have a pretty good BUSINESS proposition to lay before YOU, young man!” ”

“ Yet, brilliant as Jane's work was, Mrs. Baxter felt no astonishment; several times ere this Jane had demonstrated a remarkable faculty for the retention of details concerning William. And running hand in hand with a really superb curiosity, this powerful memory was making Jane an even greater factor in William's life than he suspected.
During the glamors of early love, if there be a creature more deadly than the little brother of a budding woman, that creature is the little sister of a budding man. ”

“ Parcher until breakfast-time, and resumed her thinking of him at intervals during the morning. Then, in the afternoon, a series of quiet events not unconnected with William's passion caused her to think of Mr. Parcher more poignantly than ever; nor was her mind diverted to a different channel by another confidential conversation with her mother. Who can say, then, that it was not by design that she came face to face with Mr. Parcher on the public highway at about five o'clock that afternoon? Everything urges the belief that she deliberately set herself in his path. ”

“ XVIII THE BIG, FAT LUMMOX
In the morning sunshine, Mrs. Baxter stood at the top of the steps of the front porch, addressing her son, who listened impatiently and edged himself a little nearer the gate every time he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“Willie,” she said, “you must really pay some attention to the laws of health, or you'll never live to be an old man.”
“I don't want to live to be an old man,” said William, earnestly. “I'd rather do what I please now and die a little sooner.” ”

“ Indulged youths, too rich, can know, to the unctuous full, neither the longing nor the gratification; but one such as William, in “moderate circumstances,” is privileged to pant for his first evening clothes as the hart panteth after the water-brook—and sometimes, to pant in vain. Also, this was a crisis in William's life: in addition to his yearning for such apparel, he was racked by a passionate urgency.
As Jane had so precociously understood, unless he should somehow manage to obtain the proper draperies he could not go to the farewell dance for Miss Pratt. ”

“ Observing the monotonously proper behavior of the sun, man had an absurd idea and invented Time. Becoming still more absurd, man said, “So much shall be a day; such and such shall be a week. All weeks shall be the same length.” Yet every baby knows better! How long for Johnnie Watson, for Joe Bullitt, for Wallace Banks—how long for William Sylvanus Baxter was the last week of Miss Pratt? No one can answer. How long was that week for Mr. Parcher? Again the mind is staggered.
Many people, of course, considered it to be a week of average size. Among these was Jane. ”

“ There was something really pageant-like about the little excursion now, and the glittering clothes-boiler, borne on high, sent flashing lights far down the street. The wash-tubs were old-fashioned, of wood; they refused to fit one within the other; so William, with his right hand, and Genesis, with his left, carried one of the tubs between them; Genesis carried the heavy wringer with his right hand, and he had fastened the other tub upon his back by means of a bit of rope which passed over his shoulder; thus the tin boiler, being a lighter burden, fell to William. ”

“ Secretly, William was not yet so changed by love as to be wholly indifferent to this refection himself, but his consumption of it was private, whereas Jane had formed the habit of eating it in exposed places—such as the front yard or the sidewalk. At no hour of the day was it advisable for a relative to approach the neighborhood in fastidious company, unless prepared to acknowledge kinship with a spindly young person either eating bread-and-butter and apple sauce and powdered sugar, or all too visibly just having eaten bread-and-butter and apple sauce and powdered sugar. ”

“ Collar-buttons and children's paint-boxes—those are the trolls that lie in wait!
The gray clothes and the flannel trousers had been destined for the professional cleaner, and William, rousing himself from a brief stupor, made a piteous effort to substitute himself for that expert so far as the gray trousers were concerned. He divested himself of them and brought water, towels, bath-soap, and a rubber bath-sponge to the bright light of his window; and; there, with touching courage and persistence, he tried to scrub the paint out of the cloth. ”

“ What on earth do you suppose they talk about? That's where Jane is now. She knew I told Genesis I'd give him something if he'd come and freeze the ice-cream for us to-day, and when we got here she heard the freezer and hopped right around there. If you went out to the back porch you'd find them talking steadily—but what on earth about I couldn't guess to save my life!”
And yet nothing could have been simpler: as a matter of fact, Jane and Genesis (attended by Clematis) were talking about society. ”

“ As William turned again to resume his meditations upon the steps, his incredulous eyes fell upon a performance amazingly beyond fantasy, and without parallel as a means to make scorn of him. Not ten feet from the porch—and in the white moonlight that made brilliant the path to the gate—Miss Mary Randolph Kirsted was walking. She was walking with insulting pomposity in her most pronounced semicircular manner. ”

“ Voices, too, often seem misplaced; one hears, outside the door, the bass rumble of a sinister giant, and a mild boy, thin as a cricket, walks in. The contrary was George Crooper's case; his voice was an unexpected piping tenor, half falsetto and frequently girlish—as surprising as the absurd voice of an elephant.
He had the general outwardness of a vast and lumpy child. His chin had so distanced his other features that his eyes, nose, and brow seemed almost baby-like in comparison, while his mountainous legs were the great part of the rest of him. ”

“ Here, in the shade of a great walnut-tree which sheltered the little building, he gave way—not to tears, certainly, but to faint murmurings and little heavings under impulses as ancient as young love itself. It is to be supposed that William considered his condition a lonely one, but if all the seventeen-year-olds who have known such halfhours could have shown themselves to him then, he would have fled from the mere horror of billions. ”

“ Spellbound groups of uninvited persons, most of them colored, rested their forearms upon the upper rail of the Parchers' picket fence, offering to William's view a silhouette like that of a crowd at a fire. Beyond the fence, bright forms went skimming, shimmering, wavering over a white platform, while high overhead the young moon sprayed a thinner light down through the maple leaves, to where processions of rosy globes hung floating in the blue night. ”

“ The careless loudness—almost the notoriety—with which he had uttered Miss Pratt's name, demanding loosely to be presented to her, regardless of the well-known law that a lady must first express some wish in such matters—these were indications of a coarse nature sure to be more than uncongenial to Miss Pratt. Its presence might make the whole occasion distasteful to her—might spoil her day. Both William and Joe Bullitt began to wonder why on earth Johnnie Watson didn't have any more sense than to invite such a big, fat lummox of a cousin to the party. ”

“ I told you you'd dance all right, once we got started, and look at the way it's turned out: our steps just suit exactly! If I must say it, I could scarcely think of anybody I EVER met I'd rather dance with. When anybody's step suits in with mine, that way, why, I LOVE to dance straight through an evening with one person, the way we're doing.”
Dimly, yet with strong repulsion, William perceived that their interminable companionship had begun to affect Miss Boke with a liking for him. ”

“ Baxter reached the door Jane's voice was heard again.
“Mamma?”
“Yes?” Mrs. Baxter paused.
“Mamma,” Jane said, slowly, “I think—I think Mr. Parcher is a very nice man. Mamma?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Mamma, what do you s'pose Willie barked at the lookin'-glass for?”
“That,” said Mrs. Baxter, “is beyond me. Young people and children do the strangest things, Jane! And then, when they get to be middle-aged, they forget all those strange things they did, and they can't understand what the new young people—like you and Willie mean by the strange things THEY do.” ”

“ Miss Boke had been sitting under the mapletree for a long time—so long, indeed, that she was acquiring a profound distaste for forestry and even for maple syrup. In fact, her state of mind was as desperate, in its way, as William's; and when a hostess leads a youth (in almost perfectly fitting conventional black) toward a girl who has been sitting alone through dance after dance, that girl knows what that youth is going to have to do.
It must be confessed for Miss Boke that her eyes had been upon William from the moment Mrs. Parcher addressed him. ”

“ Baxter, gently, “you'd better go up and brush your hair again before your friends come. You mustn't let yourself get so excited.”
“'Excited!'” he cried, incredulously. “Do you think I'm EXCITED? Ye gods!” He smote his hands together and, in his despair of her intelligence, would have flung himself down upon a chair, but was arrested half-way by simultaneous loud outcries from his mother and Jane.
“Don't sit on the CAKES!” they both screamed.
Saving himself and the pan of wafers by a supreme contortion at the last instant, William decided to remain upon his feet. ”

“ William lifted his right hand from his ankle and passed it, time after time, across his damp forehead. He did not believe that Miss Pratt could have expressed herself in so mercenary a manner, but if she HAD—well, one fact in British history had so impressed him that he remembered it even after Examination: William Pitt, the younger, had been Prime Minister of England at twenty-one.
If an Englishman could do a thing like that, surely a bright, energetic young American needn't feel worried about seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars! ”

“ In the protective darkness and seclusion of William's bedroom, it is possible that smarting eyes relieved themselves by blinking rather energetically; it is even possible that there was a minute damp spot upon the pillow. Seventeen cannot always manage the little boy yet alive under all the coverings.
Now arrived that moment he had most painfully anticipated, and dance-music drifted on the night;—but there came a tapping upon his door and a soft voice spoke. ”

“ But our expectations are fustian spangled with pinchbeck; we look for tragedy to be theatrical. Meanwhile, every day before our eyes, fate works on, employing for its instruments the infinitesimal, the ignoble and the petty—in a word, collar-buttons.
Of course William searched his dressing-table and his father's, although he had been thoroughly over both once before that day. Next he went through most of his mother's and Jane's accessories to the toilette; through trinket-boxes, glove-boxes, hairpin-boxes, handkerchief-cases—even through sewing-baskets. ”

“ It must be admitted that Milady was one of those people who do not mind being overheard, no matter what they say. “Lucky for us,” she said, “we had a nice dray bid MANS to protect us, wasn't it, Flopit?” And she thought it necessary to repeat something she had already made sufficiently emphatic.
“Nassy laundrymans!”
“I expect I gave that big mongrel the fright of his life,” said Mr. Watson, with complacency. “He'll probably run a mile!”
The shoulders of Genesis shook as he was towed along by the convulsive tub. ”

“ He's all right,” said Johnnie, and then perceiving a sudden advent of apprehension upon the sensitive brow of William, he went on reassuringly: “He's doin' as well as anybody could expect; that is—after the crazy way he DID! He's always been considered the dumbest one in all our relations—never did know how to act. I don't mean he's exactly not got his senses, or ought to be watched, anything like that—and of course he belongs to an awful good family—but he's just kind of the black sheep when it comes to intelligence, or anything like that. ”