Established in her taxi and rattling over the familiar route to her sister’s home, a pleasant thought of Zeb came to her. After all, he was the best of that rough and common group; he had always been polite to her, honest and straightforward; she remembered how kind he had been about the construction of the screens for the bungalow’s windows, hurrying their making and charging her practically no more than they had cost. She wondered if he had been to Philadelphia recently or had heard anything more of Martin. If she should chance to meet Zeb in the street some day, she debated whether or not she should ask him for news.
Baby Roy, clad in his Sunday corduroy “knickers” and a white shirt, which Jeannette knew well had been put upon him clean that morning, was sprawled on the cement steps of the Beardsleys’ home as her vehicle stopped before it. The cleanly appearance had departed from Baby Roy’s shirt, the trousers had become divorced from it, his collar was rumpled, and the bow tie, which his aunt suspected Etta’s hurried fingers had tied before church, was bedraggled and askew over one shoulder. He lay on his back, his head upon the hard stone, his fair hair in tousled confusion, gazing straight upward into the sky, his arms waving aimlessly above him. He made no move at the sound of the motor-car and only stirred when Jeannette reached the steps.
“Hello, Aunt Jan,” he drawled in his curious, indolent voice.
“Well, I declare,” said Jeannette, surveying him with puzzled amusement, “will you kindly tell me what you’re doing there? What are you looking at? What do you think you see?”
Baby Roy smiled foolishly, and with open mouth, twisted his jaw slowly from side to side.
“Aw,—I was just thinking,” he answered in awkward embarrassment. He got to his feet and put his arms around his aunt’s neck as she stooped to kiss him.
His cheek was soft and warm, and he smelled of dirt and sunburn.
“You’re a sight,” she told him; “your mother will be wild. Why don’t you try to keep yourself clean one day a week at least?”
“Ma won’t care,” the youngster observed, “and Et won’t say nothin’.”
“Pronounce your ‘g’s, Baby Roy,—say ‘noth-ing.’ Why will Etta say nothing?”