He spoke as though there were a great difference; but it was man-talk and you did not understand it.
Then he gathered you into the big, dark chair and pushed you way out on his knees and scrunched your cheeks in his hands and ate your face all up with his big eyes. When he spoke at last, his voice was way down deep like a bass drum.
"Little Boy Jack," he said, "you must never, never, never forget your Dear Mother!"
His words and the bir-r-r of them shook you like a leaf.
"But what was my Dear Mother like?" you whimpered. You had never seen your Mother.
Then your Father jumped up and walked hard on the creaky floor. When he turned round again, his eyes were all wet and shiny like a brown stained-glass window.
"What was your Dear Mother like?" he repeated. "Your Dear Mother was like—was like—the flash of a white wing across a stormy sea. And your Dear Mother's name was 'Clarice.' I give it to you for a Memorial. What better Memorial could a little boy have than his Dear Mother's name? And there is a date—" His voice grew suddenly harsh and hard like iron, and his lips puckered on his words as with a taste of rust—"there is a date—the 26th of April—No, that is too hard a date for a little boy's memory! It was a Thursday. I give you Thursday for your—Happy-Day. 'Clarice' for a Memorial, and Thursday for your Happy-Day." His words began to beat on you like blows. "As—long—as—you—live," he cried, "be very kind to any one who is named 'Clarice.' And no matter what Time brings you—weeks, months, years, centuries—keep Thursday for your Happy-Day. No cruelty must ever defame it, no malice, no gross bitterness."
Then he crushed you close to him for the millionth, billionth fraction of a second, and went away, while you stayed behind in the scary black-oak library, feeling as big and achy and responsible as you used to feel when you and your Dear Father were carrying a heavy suit-case together and your Dear Father let go his share just a moment to light his brown cigar. It gave you a beautiful feeling in your head, but way off in your stomach it tugged some.
So you crept away to bed at last, and dreamed that on a shining path leading straight from your front door to Heaven you had to carry all alone two perfectly huge suit-cases packed tight with love, and one of the suit-cases was marked "Clarice" and one was marked "Thursday." Tug, tug, tug, you went, and stumble, stumble, stumble, but your Dear Father could not help you at all because he was perfectly busy carrying a fat leather bag, some golf sticks, and a bull-terrier for a strange lady.
It was not a pleasant dream, and you screamed out so loud in the night that the Housekeeper-Woman had to come and comfort you. It was the Housekeeper-Woman who told you that on the morrow your Father was going far off across the salt seas. It was the Housekeeper-Woman who told you that you, yourself, were to be given away to a Grandmother-Lady in Massachusetts. It was also the Housekeeper-Woman who told you that your puppy dog Bruno—Bruno the big, the black, the curly, the waggy, was not to be included in the family gift to the Grandmother-Lady. Everybody reasoned, it seemed, that you would not need Bruno because there would be so many other dogs in Massachusetts. That was just the trouble. They would all be "other dogs." It was Bruno that you wanted, for he was the only dog, just as you were the only boy in the world. All the rest were only "other boys." You could have explained the matter perfectly to your Father if the Housekeeper-Woman had not made you cry so that you broke your explainer. But later in the night the most beautiful thought came to you. At first perhaps it tasted a little bit sly in your mouth, but after a second it spread like ginger, warm and sweet over your whole body except your toes, and you crept out of bed like a flannel ghost and fumbled your way down the black hall to your Dear Father's room and woke him shamelessly from his sleep. His eyes in the moonlight gleamed like two frightened dreams.