“I’d better not borrow your brother’s bike, thanks awfully. He didn’t seem really keen for me to have it.”
“Shucks,” said Miss Weber guiltily. “He’s crazy for you to have it. Nothing’ll happen. You can’t eat it, can you? Come ahead.”
The last words he ever heard from Miss Weber were spoken in the garage. “My, look at your legs! Do all Britishers wear jazz suits in bed? I’ll say old Cliff got a good laugh over that suit. My, a quarter of seven ... I must hustle. By-bye, Ed, gimme a hug. Call in at the office any time.”
When Edward said good-bye to his host and hostess, Mr. Weber spat in a pointed and rude way on to a spot near Edward’s left foot. It hurt Edward’s feelings rather.
“Somehow I don’t get on with coarse people, especially in America. Few people appreciated a man of our Hero’s exquisite fibre,” he thought, without much conviction.
Edward had two dollars and fifty cents. He was not a very good manager but he lived on that money for three days. He did not sell a single book.
“If I were the hero of a book,” he thought once, “nobody would ever believe that I had made so complete a failure of such a simple job. Never one sale. Other people in books have ups and downs in their businesses, but I have only downs—and such deep downs. I can’t think what is the matter with me. It is really that Emily is a part of me that hasn’t fitted on yet—the successful and splendid part. Emily and I could be a man and a woman. Without her I am not even a man.”
“Never mind. I have only to wait. People never go on in such an agony of wanting without at last getting what they want.”
The further away Emily went the more did Edward forget the hopelessness of his suit. He only remembered the softer aspects of Emily’s face.
The roads he chose during those three days lay often through forests. He avoided the open, wide, concrete roads. “If I can get in with the little ranches, that’ll be a cleaner field. Ranch people have boys, I suppose.”