He swept his sou’wester wide to her and went out the door. I said good-by without looking at her. I was too ashamed––and went after Clancy. But I think she was crying to herself as I went out.
XXXVI
MAURICE BLAKE IS RECALLED
The morning after the race I was eating breakfast at home and I could not remember when I enjoyed a meal like that one. I had had a fine long sleep and the sleep that comes to a man after he’s been through a long and exciting experience does make him feel like a world-beater. I felt that I could go out and about leap the length of a seine-boat or rip up a plank sidewalk. It was worth while to be alive, and everything tasted so good.
I had put away six fried eggs and about fourteen of those little slices of bacon before I even thought of slacking up (with my mother piling them up as fast as I lifted them off)––and maybe I wouldn’t have slacked then only my cousin Nell came skipping in.
She kissed my mother half a dozen times, and danced around the room. “Four vessels off the Johnnie Duncan’s model have already been ordered. Four, auntie––four. There will be a fleet of them yet, you’ll see. And how are you, Joe?”
“Fine,” I said, and kept on eating.