“If I was you, I wouldn’t try to sing after what we’ve just heard,” Dan flung back defiantly, “and, when your father wants a new roof on his old church or another carpet, he’ll be glad enough to take my father’s saloon money.”
With which they parted, Lorraine repairing to the parsonage with her budget of woes, and Dan striding across to the box-car wagon, to knock at the door.
Thurley’s mother appeared. “What is it, boy?” she demanded fretfully. “Dear me, I was napping and you woke me up with such a start my head aches. Thurley, here’s that boy that laffed.”
Dan took the opportunity to peer inside the wagon. To his mind such an existence would be unquestionably jolly, traveling, traveling, traveling, with no school, no rules or regulations whatsoever. He had a good mind to bind himself out to the Precore family then and there, despite the fact of being Daniel Birge’s only child and the wealthiest boy in the place, as his father often told him.
Inside the wagon was a rude partition. Thurley was busied with something in the front. The stock in trade of tins lined the walls, jangling discordantly on the slightest provocation. Faded stage photographs in plush frames punctuated the row of cakepans from the stewing kettles, and between the stewing kettles and the frying pans were some of Thurley’s contraptions—hand-colored “ladies,” which she had cut from fashion books or magazines and pasted on the wall. There was a rickety lounge with a red velvet “throw,” and an attempt at an easy chair, a tiny oil stove and a wretched cupboard which resembled Mother Hubbard’s concerning contents. Scraps of carpet were on the floor, a packing trunk held the Precore wardrobe. An alarm clock minus one hand, but ticking bravely, a copy of “Dreams and Premonitions,” a palm leaf fan, an old accordion, some greasy playing cards, whiskey bottles, kerosene lamps, a green penholder without any point and a few yellow-backed novels were the ornaments. The other side of the partition was evidently sleeping quarters.
Thurley appeared to demand indignantly, “Well—going to laff again?”
“Come outside,” Dan ordered, looking darkly at Thurley’s mother.
Thurley followed, her mother flopping down on the lounge and calling to Cornelius to bring her some tea.
Outside the wagon Daniel halted, coming up close to Thurley and adopting a confidential tone of voice.