The Bent Twig

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

He nodded, breathless, evidently proud of his feat, and when he caught his breath enough to speak, explained, "Yepp,—it's the only place in this bum town where you can get Alligretti's, and they're the only kind that're fit to eat" He tore open the box as he spoke, demolishing with ruthless and practised hands the various layers of fine paper and gold cord which wrapped it about, and presented the rich layer of black chocolates to Sylvia. "Get a move on and take one," he urged cordially; "I pretend I buy 'em for the girls, but I'm crazy about 'em myself," He bit into one with an air of prodigious gusto, took off his hat, wiped his forehead, and looked at Sylvia with a relish as frank as his enjoyment of the bonbon. "That's a corking hat you got on," he commented. "Most girls would look like the old Harry with that dangling thing in their eyes, but you can carry it off all right."

Sylvia's face assumed a provocative expression. "Did you ever make that remark to any other girl, I wonder?" she said reflectively.

He laughed aloud, eyeing her with appreciation, and clapping another large black chocolate into his mouth. "You're the prompt article, aren't you?" he said. He hitched himself over and leaned towards her. "Something tells me I'm goin' to have a good time at this house-party, what?"

Sylvia stiffened. She did not like his sitting so close to her, she detected now on his breath a faint odor of alcohol, and she was afraid that Eleanor Hubert would think her lacking in dignity. She regretted having succumbed to the temptation to answer him in his own tone; but, under her bravado, she was really somewhat apprehensive about this expedition, and she welcomed a diversion. Besides, the voluble young man showed not the slightest sign of noting her attempt to rebuff him, and she found quite unavailing all her efforts to change the current of the talk, the loud, free-and-easy, personally admiring note of which had the effect on her nerves of a draught of raw spirits. She did not enjoy the taste while it was being administered, but the effect was certainly stimulating, not to say exciting, and absorbed her attention so entirely that uncomfortable self-questionings were impossible. She was also relieved to note that, although the young man flung himself about in the public conveyance with the same unceremonious self-assurance that he would have shown in a lady's drawing-room, Eleanor Hubert, at the other end of the car, was apparently unaware of his presence. Perhaps she too had some grounds for uncomfortable thought, for throughout the hour's journey she continued to stare unseeingly out of the window, or to look down fixedly and rather sadly at her gloved hands.

Even through the confusion of her own ideas and plans, and the need for constant verbal self-defense against the encroaching familiarity of her companion, the notion flitted across Sylvia's mind that probably Eleanor was thinking of the young assistant in chemistry. How queer and topsy-turvy everything was, she reflected, as she bandied lively words with the lively young man at her side, continuing to eat his candies, although their rich, cloying taste had already palled on her palate—here was Mrs. Hubert throwing Eleanor at Jerry's head, when what Eleanor wanted was that queer, rough-neck freak of an assistant prof; and here were Jerry's parents making such overtures to Sylvia, when what she wanted—she didn't know what she did want. Yes, she did, she wanted a good time, which was somehow paradoxically hard to attain. Something always kept spoiling it,—half the time something intangible inside her own mind. She gave the candy-box a petulant push. "Oh, take it away!" she said impatiently; "I've eaten so many now, it makes me sick to look at them!"

The donor showed no resentment at this ingratitude, holding the box on his knees, continuing to help himself to its contents with unabated zest, and to keep the conversation up to concert pitch: "—the only girl I ever saw who'd stop eating Alligretti's while there was one left—another proof that there's only one of you—I said right off, that any co-ed that Jerry Fiske would take to must be a unique specimen—" He did not further specify the period to which he referred by his "right off," but the phrase gave Sylvia a tingling, uncomfortable sense of having been for some time the subject of speculation in circles of which she knew nothing.

They were near Mercerton now, and as she gathered her wraps together she found that she was bracing herself as for an ordeal of some sort. The big car stopped, a little way out of town, in front of a long driveway bordered with maple-trees; she and the young man descended from one end-platform and Eleanor Hubert from the other, into the midst of loud and facetious greetings from the young people who had come down to meet them. Jerry was there, very stalwart, his white sweater stretched over his broad chest. All the party carried skates, which flashed like silver in the keen winter sun. They explained with many exclamations that they had been out on the ice, which was, so the three new-comers were assured many times, "perfectly grand, perfectly dandy, simply elegant!"

A big, many-seated sled came jingling down the driveway now, driven by no less a personage than Colonel Fiske himself, wrapped in a fur-lined coat, his big mustache white against the red of his strongly marked old face. With many screams and shouts the young people got themselves into this vehicle, the Colonel calling out in a masterful roar above the din, "Miss Marshall's to come up here with me!"

He held in his pawing, excited horses with one hand and helped Sylvia with the other. In the seat behind them sat Jerry and Eleanor Hubert and the young man of the trolley trip. Sylvia strained her ears to catch Jerry's introduction of him to Eleanor, so that she might know his name. It was too absurd not even to know his name! But the high-pitched giggles and deeper shouts of mirth from the rest of the party drowned out the words. As a matter of fact, although he played for an instant a rather important rôle in Sylvia's drama, she was destined never to know his name.

The Colonel looked back over the sleighload, shouted out "All aboard!" loosened the reins, and snapped his whip over the horses' heads. They leaped forward with so violent a spring that the front runners of the long sled were for an instant lifted into the air. Immediately all the joyful shrieking and screaming which had gone on before, became as essential silence compared to the delighted uproar which now rose from the sleigh. The jerk had thrown most of the young people over backward into each other's arms and laps, where, in a writhing, promiscuous mass, they roared and squealed out their joy in the joke, and made ineffectual and not very determined efforts to extricate themselves. Sylvia had seen the jerk coming and saved herself by a clutch forward at the dashboard. Glancing back, she saw that Jerry and Eleanor Hubert still sat upright; although the gay young man beside them had let himself go backward into the waving arms and legs, and, in a frenzy of high spirits, was shouting and kicking and squirming with the others. It was a joke after his own heart.