The Purple Pennant

by Ralph Henry Barbour

The two boys parted at Main and B Streets, Fudge to loiter thoughtfully southward under the budding maples and Perry to continue briskly on along the wider thoroughfare to where, almost at the corner of G Street, a small yellow house stood in a diminutive yard behind a decaying picket fence. Over the gate, which had stood open ever since Perry had grown too old to enjoy swinging on it, was a square lantern supported on an iron arch. At night a dim light burned in it, calling the passer’s attention to the lettering on the front:

No. 7—Dr. Hull—Office.

Beside the front door a second sign proclaimed the house to be the abode of Matthew P. Hull, M. D.

Nearby was an old-fashioned bell-pull and, just below it, a more modern button. Above the latter were the words “Night Bell.” The house looked homelike and scrupulously clean, but evidences of disrepair were abundant. The bases of the four round pillars supporting the roof of the porch which ran across the front were rotting, the steps creaked ominously under Perry’s feet and the faded yellow paint was blistered and cracked.

Dr. Hull only rented the house, and the owner, since the retail business district had almost surrounded it and he expected to soon sell, was extremely chary of repairs. Perry’s father had lived there so long that he hated the thought of moving. He had grown very fond of the place, a fondness shared to a lesser extent by Mrs. Hull and scarcely at all by Perry. But Dr. Hull’s motives in remaining there were not wholly sentimental. He had slowly and arduously accumulated a fair practice and, now that the town was over-supplied with physicians, he feared that a change of location would lose him his clients. Dr. Hull was not an old man, but he was forty-odd and rather of the old-style, and shook his head over the pushing methods of the newcomers. Perry assured him that it would be a good thing if he did lose some of his present practice, since half of it brought him little or no money, and that in a better location he could secure a better class of patients. But Perry wasn’t very certain of this, while his mother, who sighed secretly for a home where the plaster didn’t crumble nor the floors creak, had even less faith in the Doctor’s ability to begin over again.

Perry glanced through the open door of the tiny waiting room on the left as he hung up his cap and, finding it empty and the further door ajar, knew that his father was out. He went on up the stairs, which complained at almost every footfall, and stole noiselessly down the narrow hall to his own room. His mother’s door was closed and this was the hour when, on Sundays, she enjoyed what she termed “forty winks.” Perry’s room was small and lighted by three narrow windows set close together. While they admitted light they afforded but little view, for beyond the shallow back-yard loomed the side wall of a five-storied brick building which fronted on G Street. Directly on a level with Perry’s windows was Curry’s Glove factory, occupying the second floor of the building. Below was a bakery. Above were offices; a dentist’s, a lawyer’s, and several that were empty or changed tenants so frequently that Perry couldn’t keep track of them. In winter the light that came through the three windows was faint and brief, but at other seasons the sunlight managed somehow to find its way there. This afternoon a golden ray still lingered on the table, falling athwart the strapped pile of school books and spilling over to the stained green felt.

Perry seated himself at the table, put an elbow beside the pile of books and, cupping chin in hand, gazed thoughtfully down into the yard. There was a lean and struggling lilac bush against one high fence and its green leaves were already unfolding. That, reflected the boy, meant that spring was really here again at last. It was already nearly the middle of April. Then came May and June, and then the end of school. He sighed contentedly at the thought. Not that he didn’t get as much pleasure out of school as most fellows, but there comes a time, when buds are swelling and robins are hopping and breezes blow warmly, when the idea of spending six hours of the finest part of the day indoors becomes extremely distasteful. And that time had arrived.

Perry turned to glance with sudden hostility at the piled-up books. What good did it do a fellow, anyway, to learn a lot of Latin and algebra and physics and—and all the rest of the stuff? If he only knew what he was going to be when he grew up it might save a lot of useless trouble! Until a year ago he had intended to follow in his father’s footsteps, but of late the profession of medicine had failed to hold his enthusiasm. It seemed to him that doctors had to work very hard and long for terribly scant returns in the way of either money or fame. No, he wouldn’t be a doctor. Lawyers had a far better time of it; so did bankers and—and almost everyone. Sometimes he thought that engineering was the profession for him. He would go to Boston or New York and enter a technical school and learn civil or mining engineering. Mining engineers especially had a fine, adventurous life of it. And he wouldn’t have to spend all the rest of his life in Clearfield then.

Clearfield was all right, of course; Perry had been born in it and was loyal to it; but there was a whole big lot of the world that he’d like to see! He got up and pulled an atlas from the lower shelf of his book-case and spread it open. Colorado! Arizona! Nevada! Those were names for you! And look at all the territory out there that didn’t have a mark on it! Prairies and deserts and plateaus! Miles and miles and miles of them without a town or a railroad or anything! Gee, it would be great to live in that part of the world, he told himself. Adventures would be thick as blueberries out there. Back here nothing ever happened to a fellow. He wondered if it would be possible to persuade his father to move West, to some one of those fascinating towns with the highly romantic names; like Manzanola or Cotopaxi or Painted Rock. His thoughts were far afield now and, while his gaze was fixed on the lilac bush below, his eyes saw wonderful scenes that were very, very foreign to Clearfield. The sunlight stole away from the windows and the shadows gathered in the little yard. The room grew dark.

Just how long Perry would have sat there and dreamed of far-spread prairies and dawn-flushed deserts and awesome cañons had not an interruption occurred, there’s no saying. Probably, though, until his mother summoned him to the Sunday night supper. And that, since it was a frugal repast of cold dishes and awaited the Doctor’s presence, might not have been announced until seven o’clock. What did rouse him from his dreaming was the sudden appearance of a light in one of the third floor windows of the brick building. It shone for a moment only, for a hand almost immediately pulled down a shade, but its rays were bright enough to interrupt the boy’s visions and bring his thoughts confusedly back.