“Thank you, Mrs. Clayton,” said Tommy, glad to find a home. He impulsively held out his hand.
Mrs. Clayton shook it warmly. As if by an afterthought, she asked, “You are a stranger here?”
“Yes, ma'am; I only got in this morning.”
“He is in the office,” put in Bill, in the voice of an agency giving financial rating. “Come on, Leigh.”
Tommy followed Bill, who took him to the room lately occupied by Perkins. A small, dingy room it was. The bed was wooden. The three chairs were of different patterns. The wash-stand, pitcher, and basin belonged to a bygone era. The carpet was piebald as to color and plain bald as to nap. The table was of the kind that you know to be rickety without having to touch it. Altogether it was so depressing that it seemed eminently just. It epitomized the life of a working-man.
It induced the mood of loneliness Tommy had felt when he stepped off the train. But this time there was no exhilaration, no desire to dramatize the glorious fight of Thomas Francis Leigh against the world.
Tommy turned to his companion. “Look here,” he said, a trifle hysterically, “I'm not going to call you Byrnes. Do you understand? You are Bill. My name is not Leigh, but Tommy; not Tom—Tommy! If there is going to be any—anything different I'll go somewhere else.”
Tommy looked at Bill defiantly—and also hopefully.
“All right,” said Bill, unconcernedly. “She gives pretty good grub. My room is next door.”
And then Tommy felt that his old world had been wiped off the map. He was beginning his new life—with friends! A great chasm divided the two periods. And in that knowledge Tommy found a comfort that he could not have explained in words.