He started off on a dog-trot up the railroad track, making a short-cut through the back of the town. Reluctantly I turned away toward my own house and sat down on the step. It did not seem worth while to go in and unpack any more of Jasper’s things. I might never live there.
While light lasted I lingered outside and looked at the quiet bay and the fishermen returning from their boats. They wore high red rubber boots and gray flannel shirts open at the throat. Barefooted children in denim overalls came running to meet them on the boardwalk, and tugged at their brown hands and begged for rides upon their shoulders.... And I had thought that some day children might be running down our flagging—but now, I did not know.
I could see the old arcade grinning at me, were I forced to go back to New York, and the sign in the corridors leaped into malicious letters, “Dogs and children not allowed.” I remembered the sort of man who returned there at night, stepping languidly out of a yellow cab, light-wood cane under one arm while he paid the driver, nothing waiting for him but a fresh bunch of bills under his door. And those other ne’er-do-well tenants, hatless and unpressed, affecting sandals to save socks, having nothing in common with their sporty neighbors but the garbage-pail on the fire-escape. After three days of the promised land, must I go back to that?
Why didn’t the judge come?
I went inside and lit the lamps, because I dared not let the house grow dark before entering, then sank down by the window and rocked nervously, watching the street. But what I saw was not the stalwart figure of my old friend approaching through the evening haze, but the grotesque contour of the town crier, preceded by his bell.
Clang, clang, clankety-clang! He swung the big brass tongue as if all the world were waiting for his message.
In front of the House of the Five Pines he stopped short and with his back to it, read out to the bay: “Burr ... buzz.... Sheriff’s auction ... Long Nook Road ... Monday....”
He swung his bell again and hobbled up the street. It was late for the town crier to be abroad and he was in a hurry.
“That will be the next thing,” I thought; “that will happen to me. Some day the bell-man will be going up and down the boardwalk advertising another house for sale, and that one will be mine.”
The idea was so discouraging that I tried to think of something not so lugubrious. Where was the judge? I picked up the magazine that he had thrust upon me earlier in the day and began to read it.