“Yes, I know,” he said.
“You know,” Wint went on, abruptly, “people are funny, B. B.”
“Yes.”
“I’m funny, myself.”
B. B. laughed in a friendly way. “Like the old Quaker who said to his wife: ‘All the world is a little queer save thee and me, my dear; and even thee are at times a little queer.’”
“No,” said Wint, smiling. “I include myself. I’m queer.”
B. B. said nothing. Wint started to go on, but the words were not in him. He had a curious, sudden impulse to ask B. B. about his father; this impulse was like homesickness. But he fought it back. His jaw set stubbornly. His father had thrown him out. That was enough; he didn’t ask to be kicked twice.
When B. B. saw that Wint was not going on, he spoke of something else. Then Ed Howe, one of Caretall’s men, dropped in and cut a slice from a plug and filled his pipe in the Caretall fashion: and Wint listened to Ed and B. B. talk for a while before he got up and took himself away. He had found some measure of reassurance in his talk with B. B., not because of anything that had been said, but simply because B. B. was a reassuring man. A strong man. A strong man, and a wise man, with open eyes—and an optimist. Not all men who seem to see clearly are optimists.
In front of the Post Office, Wint ran into Jack Routt. Routt had been out of town for a month or so on a business trip, and Wint had seen little of him since Amos went away. He was glad to see Jack, and said so. They shook hands, and Wint bought Routt a cigar. Routt studied Wint curiously. He wondered if it were true that Wint was keeping straight and doing well. And to find out, he asked laughingly:
“Been over to see Mrs. Moody lately, old man?”