This was too intimate for immediate acceptance; but she would at least show him that whatever changes might have taken place in their affairs, she was not a snob.
“You are Jerry; the other Amidon boy was Obadiah. I remember him because the name always seemed so funny.”
“You’re playing safe! Obey died when he was ten—poor little kid! Scarlet fever. That was right after the flood you floated away on.”
She murmured her regret at the death of his brother. It was, however, still a delicate question just how much weight should be given to these slight ties of their common youth.
The disagreeable connotations of his introduction—the southward-looking vista that led back to the poverty and squalor to which she was born—were rather rosily obscured by the atmosphere of assured blitheness he exhaled. He seemed to imply that both had put Belleville behind them and that there was nothing surprising in this meeting under happier conditions. He was a clean-cut, well-knit, resolute young fellow. His brownish hair was combed back from his forehead with an onion-skin smoothness; indeed, he imparted a general impression of smoothness. His gray eyes expressed a juvenile innocence; his occasional smile was a slow, reluctant grin that disclosed white, even teeth. A self-confident young fellow, a trifle fresh, and yet with an unobtrusive freshness that was not displeasing, Nan thought, as she continued to observe and appraise him.
“I broke away from the home-plate when I was sixteen,” he went on, “about four years after you pulled out; and I’ve been engaged in commercial pursuits in this very town ever since. Arrived in a freight-car,” he amplified cheerfully, as though she were entitled to all the facts. “Got a job with the aforesaid well-known jobbing house. Began by sweeping out, and now I swing a sample-case down the lower Wabash. Oh, not vulgarly rich! but I manage to get my laundry out every Saturday night.”
“You travel for the house, do you?” she asked with a frown of perplexity.
“That’s calling it by a large name; but I can’t deny that your words give me pleasure. They’re just trying me out; it’s up to me to make good. I’ve seen you in the office now and then; but you never knew me.”
“If I ever saw you, I didn’t know you, of course,” she said with unaffected sincerity; “if I had, I should have spoken to you.”
“Oh, I never worried about that! But of course it would be all right if you didn’t want to remember me. I was an ugly little one-gallus kid with a frowsy head and freckled face. I shouldn’t expect you to remember me for my youthful beauty; but you saved me from starvation once; I sat on your fence and watched you eat a large red apple, and traded you my only agate—it was an imitation—for the core.”