"I sure did."
"When you goin'?"
"To-morrow."
"Well, of all the big boobs," sneered Miss Kearney; "what did you go and do that for?"
"Search me," said Buzz, dully. "Search me."
Then he turned and went on toward home, alone. The Kearney girl's silly, empty laugh came back to him through the darkness. It might have been called a scornful laugh if the Kearney girl had been capable of any emotion so dignified as scorn.
The family was still up. The door was open to the warm May night. The Werners, in their moments of relaxation, were as unbuttoned and highly negligée as one of those group pictures you see of the Robert Louis Stevenson family. Pa, shirt-sleeved, stocking-footed, asleep in his chair. Ma's dress open at the front. Minnie, in an untidy kimono, sewing.
On this flaccid group Buzz burst, bomb-like. He hung his hat on the hook, wordlessly. The noise he made woke his father, as he had meant that it should. There came a muttered growl from the old man. Buzz leaned against the stairway door, negligently. The eyes of the three were on him.
"Well," he said, "I guess you won't be bothered with me much longer." Ma Werner's head came up sharply at that.
"What you done, Ernie?"