“Well, I knew you’d be going one of these days,” his brother Ed remarked.
That seemed strange to Felix, who had kept his Chicago intentions carefully to himself all that year....
And his brother Jim, who was working again in spite of his lameness, was quite converted from his supper-table querulousness by the announcement. “When I was in Chicago—” he said, and told stories of the Chicago of ten years ago, where he had tried briefly to gain a foothold. It remained in his mind, it seemed, not as a failure, but as a glorious excursion....
Alice, Ed’s wife, was enchanted. Her cheeks glowed, and she asked endless questions. It appeared that none of them had the slightest doubt of Felix’s ultimate, and splendid, success. It really seemed as if they envied him!
And all the while, Felix was thinking what an ironic spectacle he would present if he returned home in a month or two. He clenched his fists under the table-edge, and swore to himself that he would never—never—make that confession of failure....
“You must write to your mother and tell her all about it, Felix,” said Alice.
His mother and father were down on the farm in Illinois where Mrs. Fay had lived as a little girl. She had never adjusted herself to town life; nor had her husband. They were best content in the country, where she could grow flowers in the front yard and he could fatten and butcher and salt down a couple of hogs for the winter.... Their only grievance was that their children found so little time to come and visit them. Ed usually came once a year, in the slack season, and Jim when he needed a rest; but Felix, it seemed, was always too busy....
“Why bother her about my going to Chicago?” Felix grumbled.
“Why, Felix!” Alice reproached him. She could never understand why it was so hard for him to write to his mother.
“I don’t want her worrying about me,” Felix explained uncomfortably.