He could hear Gladys calling into the interior of the house:
"Well, what do you know about that? Ted's at Paterson and not coming home to-night or to-morrow night." Into the receiver she said, "But, Ted, what'll they say at the bank?"
"I may not go back to the bank. This is a new job. You remember the fellow I was working for on the side? Well, he's put me into this, and perhaps I'm going to make money."
"Oh, Ted," Gladys called, delightedly, "how many plunks?"
"It—it isn't a salary," he stammered. "I—I may be in the firm. To-morrow I may have to go to Philadelphia. Tell ma not to worry—and not to miss me. I'll try to call up from Philadelphia, but if I can't—Well, anyhow, give my love to ma and everybody, and if I'm not home the day after to-morrow, don't think anything about it."
He put up the receiver before Gladys could ask any more questions, and felt ready to cry again. In order not to do that, he walked out of the station into the street, where the presence of the crowds compelled him to self-control. Having nothing to do and nowhere to go, he walked on and on, getting some relief from his desolation by the mere fact of movement.
So he walked and walked and walked, headed vaguely toward the outskirts of the town. There were vast marshes there into which he could stray and be lost. The rank grasses in this early August season were almost as high as his shoulders, so that he could lie down and be beyond all human ken. His body might not be found for weeks, might never be found at all. Teddy Follett would simply disappear, his fate remaining a mystery.
Toward seven o'clock, the shabby suburbs began to show their primrose-colored lights—a twinkle here, a twinkle there, stringing out in longer streets to scattered bits of garland. Teddy felt hungry. Counting his money and finding that he had two dollars and thirty-one cents, he was sorry not to be able to transmit the two dollars to his mother.
Growing more and more hungry, and knowing he must keep up his nerve, he spied a little bread-and-pastry shop just where the houses were thinning out and the marshes invading the town, as the ocean invaded the marshes. On entering, he asked for two tongue sandwiches and half a dozen doughnuts. The woman who wrapped up the sandwiches and dropped the doughnuts into a paper bag was an English-speaking foreigner of the Scandinavian type, blond, dumpy, with a row of bad teeth and piercing blue eyes. As she performed her task, she seemed not to take her eyes from off him, though her smile was kind, and she called his attention to the fact that she was giving him seven doughnuts for his six.
"You don't lif rount here?" she asked, in counting out the change for his dollar.