CHAPTER VIII
HAVING once admitted hopelessness, it was humanly natural that they should again hope that they hoped. For perhaps two weeks after the Carters’ visit they pretended that the tea-room was open, and they did have six or seven customers. But late in September Father got his courage up, took out the family pen and bottle of ink, the tablet of ruled stationery and a stamped-envelope, and wrote to Mr. J. Pilkings that he wanted his shoe-store job back.
When he had mailed the letter he told Mother. She sighed and said, “Yes, that is better, after all.”
An Indian summer of happiness came over them. They were going back to security. Again Father played the mouth-organ a little, and they talked of the familiar city places they would see. They would enjoy the movies—weeks since they had seen a movie! And they would have, Father chucklingly declared, “a bang-up dinner at Bomberghof Terrace, with music, and yes, by Jiminy! and cocktails!”
For a week he awaited an answer, waited anxiously, though he kept reassuring himself that old Pilkings had promised to keep the job open for him. He received a reply. But it was from Pilkings’s son. It informed him that Pilkings, père, was rather ill, with grippe, and that until he recovered “no action can be taken regarding your valued proposition in letter of recent date.”
Bewildered, incredulous, Father had a flash of understanding that he, who felt himself so young and fit, was already discarded.
Mother sat across the kitchen table from him, pretending to read the Grimsby Recorder, but really watching him.
He held his forehead, looked dizzy, and let the letter slip from his fingers. “I—uh—” he groaned. “I— Is there anything I can do for you around the house?”