'I don't know. I don't like the stuff.'
'Come, Hen, tell me. Or drop it. Either.'
'I'll tell you. But I get so mad. It's—she—well, she wore pants.'
Humphrey's sympathy and interest were real, and he did not smile as he queried: 'Bloomers?'
'No, pants. Britches. I never saw anything so tight. Nothing else like 'em in the whole place. People nudged each other and laughed and said things, right out loud. Hump, it was terrible. And we walked clear through—past hundreds of tables—and away over in the corner—and there were the Ameses, and Martha, and——'
His head was up now; there was fire in his eyes; his voice trembled with the passion of a profound moral indignation.
'Hump, she's tough. She rides with that crowd from Pennyweather Point. She smokes cigarettes. She—she leads a double life.'
And neither did it occur to Humphrey, looking at the blazing youth before him, to smile at that last remark.
Humphrey had reached a point of real concern over Henry. He thought about him the last thing that night—pictured him living a lonely, spasmodically ascetic life, in the not over cheerful boarding-house of Mrs Wilcox—and the first thing the next morning.
The curious revelation of the later morning nettled him, perhaps, as a responsible editor, but, if anything, deepened his concern. He had the boy on his conscience, that was the size of it. He thought him over all the morning, before and after the revelation. After it he smoked steadily and hard, and knit his brows, and shook his head gravely, and chuckled.