They walked over to the painted maiden and asked her if she could recommend the show; they grinned and gaped at her amorously. She fawned on them and they bought tickets and went in. I wasn’t a bit sorry, nor did I try to stop them. My last expenence with the gang in Levant had not implanted in me any hankering to hug and kiss the Sortwell boys.
I watched for them to come out, for I felt pretty sure that they would be properly trimmed and I anticipated secret relish in looking on their faces. I told myself I didn’t care. If a good jolt should be handed to them it would help in satisfying my grudge against the town which had sent me flying. Bitterness was in me at that moment. I was glad I was out of the jay place. If I had stayed there I would be looking just like those simpering rubes who had gone in like lambs to be sheared. I’d never want to go back to that town, I decided all over again.
When they came out each one carried one of Professor Jewelle’s charts, and they were crying like great calves—actually guffling slobbering sobs. They went away a little distance and stood on the sidewalk, looking at each other and scruffing tears from their eyes with the palms of their hands. Awhile back if somebody had told me I would see a couple of big, larruping chaps from Levant doing that on the street in broad daylight, I’d have predicted a good laugh for myself.
Well, there was nothing like that in my case!
A lump swelled in my throat. I don’t know what it was—whether ’twas homesickness, longing for my own people of my own kind, spectacle of boys who had gone barefoot with me, sight of their sorrow, mindfulness of what the cruel city had done to me, reflection that I had helped in a measure to get them into their scrape—I say I don’t know just what it was. But my throat gripped and tears flowed up into my eyes. Those poor devils, who were children in spite of their size, were helplessly adrift—I could see that. Something special must have happened to them.
I seem to be stopping to analyze my emotions. At the time I was doing nothing of the sort. I felt a comforting sense that I was not a rascal down in my heart, in spite of what I had done and of the job I was holding down.
I left my rostrum, ran into the little office, and tipped Dawlin’s bottle of whisky against my upper lip; the alcohol dissolved the gum and I ripped off the mustache. Then I chased along after the Sortwell boys. They were far up the street, plugging slowly with bowed shoulders.
When I came close upon them I took my time to get my breath and control my emotions. Then I called to them, and they turned around and stared at me with eyes which expressed all the range of feelings between interrogation and stupefaction.
“Well, haven’t you anything to say to an old friend?” I asked.
“It ain’t you,” faltered the older. “It may look like you, but it ain’t.”