PART IV
I
Johnny McComas was still carrying on his business life and his home life in the suburb where he had married, when I came, finally, to make my first call on the domestic group of which he was the nub. Still in the future was the day when he was to move into town, and to have also a summer home on the North Shore, and to make some of his father-in-law's spare funds yield profitable results, and to arouse among wistful clerks and unsuccessful "operators" an admiring wonder as the youngest bank-president in the "Loop."
I looked in on him one evening in late November. I found a house too emphatically furnished and a wife too concerned about making an impression. I did not consider myself a young man of prime consequence and did not relish the expenditure of so much effort: after all, Johnny's standing, Johnny's wife, Johnny's domestic entourage were not before a judgment-bar. It was plain to see that for Mrs. John W. McComas complete social comfort had not yet been reached, and I wondered if the next move might not show it as farther away than ever.
Johnny himself was bluff and direct, and took things as a matter of course. Much had been done, but more remained to be done; meanwhile all was well and good. After a little, his wife was content to leave us alone together, and we drifted to Johnny's "den"—a word new at that time, and descriptive of the only feature of his home on which he laid the slightest self-conscious emphasis.
I had heard that there were twins—boys; and soon, as the evening was still young, I heard the twins themselves. They had reached the age of ten months, and consequently had developed wants, but no articulate means for making those wants known. Therefore they howled, and they began howling in unison now. Perhaps it was for them that a foresighted mother had left us alone together.
"Great little hollerers!" said Johnny placidly, pulling at his pipe.