Gergue spat, and rummaged through his hair. “Can’t always do what’s right,” he said.
“I’m afraid Amos will resent this,” Hollow went on. Peter said he shouldn’t wonder.
“If he does object, guess he’ll know how to show it,” he remarked. And Hollow agreed, and added admiringly that Amos always seemed to know just the right thing to do.
The Hardiston Sun and the Journal were both friendly to Winthrop Chase, Senior; so Skinner and B. B. Beecham made no comment on Wint’s change of residence. But the semi-weekly Herald, which was an outcast with its hand against every man, politically speaking, said, under a headline: “The Prodigal Returns,” that Wint, “whose break with the elder Chase dates from the election, when Senior was made a laughingstock before the state, has returned to the parental rooftree. Please omit fatted calves.”
Sam O’Brien, the fat restaurant man, told Ned Bentley it was a good thing. “Young Wint’s a fine lad,” he said. “And he’s on the right track. Does no good, never, to break with your blood and kin.”
Thus each took his own point of view. It was a poor citizen of Hardiston who had nothing to say about the matter, except that those most concerned had nothing to say at all.
The actual home-coming was simple and undramatic. Wint sent his trunk out during the day after his talk with his father. In the late afternoon of that day, he happened to drop in at the Post Office for the late mail, and met his father there. They greeted each other casually; and Wint asked:
“On your way home?”
“I have to stop at the bakery.”
“I’ll go along,” said Wint. And he did, while people stared with all their eyes. Old Mrs. Mueller, the comfortable little woman who owned the bakery, and who was always associated in Wint’s mind with the delicious fragrance of newly baked bread, lifted both hands at sight of them together, then dropped her hands abruptly and wiped them on her apron and served them without a word. Before the door closed behind them, they heard her, behind the screen in the rear of the shop, volubly telling some one the news.