So with work, with sports, with amusements, the winter sped by, bringing a sense of an expanding life. He had one main care: Maisie was more unhappy. Her appeals to him to throw up college, to become a chauffeur and marry her, increased in urgency.
He had come to the point of seeing that his engagement to Maisie was a bit of folly. If Honey were to learn of it, or the Ansleys ... but he hoped to keep it secret till he won a position in which he could be free of censure. Once with an income to support a wife, his mistakes and sufferings would be his own business. In proportion as life opened up it was easy for him to face trouble cheerfully.
May had come round, and by keeping his birthday on the fifth of March, he was now more than eighteen. On a Saturday morning when there was no school to attend he and Guy had lingered on the roof of the Ansley house after their task with the wireless apparatus was over. Looking across the river toward Cambridge, where one big tower marked the site of Harvard, they were speculating on the new step in manhood they would take in the following October.
Pilcher's old head appeared through the skylight to inform Mr. Guy that lunch was waiting. Madam wished him to come down.
"Where is she?"
"She's in the dining room, Mr. Guy."
"Get along, Tom. I'll be ready with the runabout at two. You won't be late, will you?"
Tom said he would not be late, following Pilcher through the skylight and down the several flights of stairs. He was eager to slip out the front door without encountering Mrs. Ansley. Mrs. Ansley was eager not to encounter him. With lunch on the table, it would be awkward not to ask him to sit down; and to ask him to sit down would be out of the question. It would be just like Guy....
And then Guy did what was just like him. "Mother," he called out, puffing down the last of the staircases, "why can't Tom have lunch with us? He's got to be back here at two anyway. He's coming out with me in the runabout."
Tom was doing his best to turn the knob of the front door. "Couldn't, Guy," he whispered back, shaking his head violently. "Got to beat it."