The next day being Sunday, they slept late into the morning. In the afternoon Honey Lem had a new idea. Without saying what it was, he took the boy to walk through Fourteenth Street, till they reached Fifth Avenue. Here they climbed to the top of an electric bus going northward, and Tom had a new experience. Except for having crossed it in the market lorry, in the dimness and emptiness of dawn, this stimulating thoroughfare was unknown to him.
Even on a Sunday afternoon in summer, when shops were shut, residences closed, and saunterers relatively few, it added a new concept to those already in his mental possession. It was that of magnificence. These ornate buildings, these flashing windows, these pictures, jewels, flowers, fabrics, furnishings, did more than appeal to his eye. They set free a function of his being that had hitherto been sealed. The first atavistic memory of which he had ever been aware was consciously in his mind. Somewhere, perhaps in some life before he was born, rich and beautiful things had been his accessories. He had been used to them. They were not a surprise to him now; they came as a matter of course. To see them was not so much a discovery as it was a return to what he had been accustomed to. He was thinking of this, with an inward grin of derision at himself for feeling so, when Honey went back to the topic of the night before.
"The reason I said Boston is because they've got that great big college there. If I'm to bring yer up, I'll have to send yer to college."
The opening was obvious. "But, Honey, you don't have to bring me up."
"How can I be yer next o' kin if I don't bring ye' up, a young boy like you? Be sensible, Kiddy. Yer ch'ice is between me and the State, and I'd be a lot better nor that, wouldn't I? The State won't be talkin' o' sendin' yer to college, mind that now."
There was no controverting the fact. As a State ward, he would not go to college, and to college he meant to go. If he could not go by one means he must go by another. Since Honey would prove a means of some sort, he might be obliged to depend on him.
The bus was bowling and lurching up the slope by which Fifth Avenue borders the Park, when Honey rose, clinging to the backs of the neighboring seats. "We'll git out at the next corner."
Having reached the ground, he led the way across the street, scanning the houses opposite.
"There it is," he said, with choked excitement, when he had found the façade he was looking for. "That big brown front, with the high steps, and the swell bow-winders. That's where the Whitelaw baby used to live."