"But Ma got Dad to get the Doc, 'cos she can't bear to part with Len even for a day—to give'm lessons at home.—I suppose he's her eldest son.—Doc needn't, he's well-to-do. But he likes it, when he's here. When he's not, Lennie slopes off and reads what he pleases. But it makes no difference to Len, he's real clever. And—" Tom added grinning—"he wouldn't speak like you do neither, not for all the tin in a cow's bucket."
To Jack, fresh from an English Public school, Len was amazing. If he hurt himself sharply, he sat and cried for a minute or two. Tears came straight out, as if smitten from a rock. If he read a piece of sorrowful poetry, he just sat and cried, wiping his eyes on his arm without heeding anybody. He was greedy, and when he wanted to, he ate enormously, in front of grown-up people. And yet you never minded. He talked poetry, or raggy bits of Latin, with great sententiousness and in the most awful accent, and without a qualm. Everything he did was right in his own eyes. Perfectly right in his own eyes.
His mother was fascinated by him.
Three things he did well: he rode, bare-back, standing up, lying down, anyhow. He rode like a circus rider. Also he boasted—heavens high. And thirdly, he could laugh. There was something so sudden, so blithe, so impish, so daring, and so wistful in his lit-up face when he laughed, that your heart melted in you like a drop of water.
Jack loved him passionately: as one of the family.
And yet even to Lennie, Tom was the hero. Tom, the slow Tom, the rather stupid Tom. To Lennie Tom's very stupidity was manly. Tom was so dependable, so manly, such a capable director. He never gave trouble to anyone, he was so complacent and self-reliant. Lennie was the love-child, the elf. But Tom was the good, ordinary Man, and therefore the hero.
Jack also loved Tom. But he did not accept his manliness so absolutely. And it hurt him a little, that the strange sensitive Len should put himself so absolutely in obedience and second place to the good plain fellow. But it was so. Tom was the chief. Even to Jack.
III
When Tom was away, Jack felt as if the pivot of all activity was missing. Mr. Ellis was not the real pivot. It was the plain, red-faced Tom.
Tom had talked a good deal, in snatches, to Jack. It was the family that bothered him, as usual. He always talked the family.