But Stone, who had an abnormally long tongue, was using it to explore the outside of his lower cheek, in the hope of prolonging by a second or two the taste of lemon squash. Apparently failing in this he peeled the paper from a strip of chewing gum and inserted the contents. He did not answer Edward but, on the other hand, did not destroy hope of an answer by shutting his mouth. The chewing gum, though active, remained in the public gaze.
Edward felt helpless but, in such a cause, dared not cease his efforts.
“What’s happened to Emily and her friends?” he asked. “Didn’t you come here with them?”
“Yump,” said Stone. “Hey, boy, gimme my check. I must hustle. Going out horseback riding with the Doc.”
A shower of money fell from his pockets as he rose and the re-assembling of this gave Edward an opportunity to speak again.
“No, but truly, I want awfully to know about Emily and the others. I say, if you’ll stay and give the Doc a miss for today, we’ll go somewhere and find a real American soda fountain.”
He thought Stone might strike him. Or perhaps Stone would simply walk away, dwindle through the door and be lost in the sunlight forever.
“Sure I’ll stop,” said Stone W. Ponting, putting out his tongue meditatively and sitting down again. “We kin get a dandy nut sundae right here. Nut sundae’s mine.”
“Why Emerly’s went up the Yangtze Ki-yang,” he told Edward in reply to three or four more questions. “So’s Tam and Lucy. Peking fer mine, I said, when they wanted to have me go withum. My dad’s sent me plenty of dough, so I should worry. My dad’ll be tickled to death to have me withum. He and Mom bin fighting for the custody of me. Dad won. But he had to go to Japan or some place on business. He’s a financier.”
Edward was neither acute enough nor sufficiently interested to notice the sad bleak defences the child had put up for himself against a hard world. Edward thought, “A detestable child. He has too little imagination and too much horse-sense to help me.”