"That's right, my boy, enjoy yourself. They say them Toronto shows isn't as good as we get here. What do you think, now?"
"I don't imagine they are," replied Evan, quickly; and then, in one of those absurd rushes after an idea to make plausible a consciously absurd utterance, "I suppose it sort of—they sort of—"
"Yes, you're right," rejoined Japers, fully believing that he and Nelson between them could outwit most theatrical critics. The gardener and his assistant blathered away until Miss Japers was obliged to float her ribbons out of the front door in a dazzling hint that the family party was ready.
The Japers did not wait for Evan to dress; Lizzie was constrained to do so, but her mother looked so uncomfortably fussed up that the girl had compassion, and left the romantic excitement of a bankclerk's presence for the less alluring sensation of Hamilton's main street.
An hour or so later Evan sauntered up town. He did not feel exactly lonesome, there by himself in the Saturday crowds, but rather out of his environment. It seemed strange to him to have no immediate task on hand, to have nothing to balance or look up. His mind felt almost vacant, for want of something to burden it; but the vacant feeling was, oh, such a relief! Only the weary clerk can understand this thing; he knows so well what it means to carry a burden with him on a pleasure trip. "Pleasure" is not the adjective to qualify such a trip, where trees and flowers are decked with figures and where the mind sees phantoms of accumulated and accumulating work, waiting, waiting like Fate. Stories have been told of criminals carrying the body of a victim around on their backs until they stood on the brink of insanity. Hundreds of bankboys know what it is to feel the weight of corpse-like figures on their backs. One cannot get away from the horrible burden, it clings until the heart is sick and the stomach nauseated. And these monsters are not victims of the bankclerk's, either; the clerk is their victim; nor does he in any way merit the unnatural attachment—someone else digs them out of their graves (the bank "morgue" of accumulated back-work) for plunder, and saddles them on him.....
Evan's mind felt vacant; that was much better than having it loaded with worry, worry that could result in nothing but harm to the clerk and nothing but cold dollars to the bank.
The young ex-banker refreshed himself with a solitary sundae and then took steps in the direction of a theatre advertising the old drama, "East Lynne." He bought an economic half-dollar seat and entered while the orchestra was playing one of the reddest rags out. He had read "Mrs. Henry Wood's" great book, but he searched his memory in vain for a clue to the propriety of ragtime as a preface to the story.
A moment before the curtain lifted a girl came into the theatre and was ushered to a lonesome seat beside Evan. He was, gardener fashion, watching for his money's worth, and paid no attention to the person beside him until first intermission, when a squint told him that here was someone very like Hazel Morton of Mt. Alban. Then he looked fully into her eyes and held out his hand. She seemed surprised.
"Don't you know me, Miss Morton?"
"Why—I'm afraid—why, yes I do!"