“She left of her own accord.”
“So you told me. But why?”
“Because she got a crazy idea that I was the original Unpardonable Sinner. And having made up her mind to it, she natcher’lly didn’t want her opinions shaken by any remarks for the defence. So she left.”
Gerald did not pursue the subject. He seldom, indeed, dwelt so long, nowadays, on any one theme of talk. He moistened his dry lips once more, sucked at his cigarette and slouched along in silence. His father asked several questions that bore on the impending election, and was answered in monosyllables. The cigarette burned down to its cork tip, and Gerald lighted another at its smouldering stump.
“Have a cigar?” suggested Caleb, viewing this operation with manifest disgust.
“No, thanks.”
“It’s better’n one of those measly connecting links between fire and a fool,” grunted Caleb. Gerald puffed on without answering.
“I said,” repeated Caleb, a little louder, “the rankest Flor de Garbage campaign cigar, with a red-and-yaller surcingle around its waist, is a blamed sight better’n any Cairo, Illinois, Egyptian cig’rette. Is there five minutes a day when you’re not smoking one?”
“No.”
“’Tain’t good for any man, smoking so much as that, ’spesh’ly a man with a boy’s size chest like yours. Stunts the growth, too, I hear, and——”