Edward bicycled briskly away. He looked himself over when he was out of sight of the ranch. His clothes were creased like the cheek of a nonagenarian. Milton for Our Boys was an anomaly as a bait at the end of that crumpled sleeve. He would try no more. “Our Hero was never one to fly in the face of fate.” He bicycled into the Chicken-City and he was so much irritated by hunger that he hoped he would run over someone and die in the attempt. All the faces on the sidewalks made him uncontrollably angry. He went into a saloon and ordered a brandy. He was so angry that his voice trembled. He would never see Emily again. He would die in the suburbs of a chicken center. He would find another gold poppy and it would pour gold into his eyes until his eyes closed. Poppies are better than pennies on dead eyes.
“Only a matter of a few days more,” said the saloon keeper in a friendly voice.
“Being deaf is as bad as being haunted,” thought Edward, wondering what the man had really said. “A matter of one day more,” he grunted.
“No, sir. June thirtieth’s the last day and you don’t wanta forget it. I’ll say the boys’ll be around that night. What gets me’s how the government put it over, but—well, I should worry I guess.”
“He’s talking of Prohibition,” Edward realised. “Well, by the end of this week I shall be prohibited anyway.”
Just as the saloon keeper began another remark, Edward turned his back irritably and sat down at a table. The brandy combined rather badly with his hunger.
There was a newspaper on the table. Rhoda Romero’s name was on it in tall headlines.
Acquitted.
There was a snapshot of Rhoda, with a defensive hand to her chin, walking with one foot up. “.... Collapsed on hearing verdict.... Miss Romero, who is in private life Mrs. Avery Bird ... yesterday, facing a possibility of a fourteen
years’ sentence, not a muscle of her face (of a Grecian type) twitches ... today, declared free ... attack of hysterics in court ... hides her face among hubby’s vest buttons ... refuses to disclose her plans ... will perhaps visit relatives in the East ... complete nervous collapse....”
Edward felt absolutely no joy on Rhoda’s account. “It’s no use pretending,” he thought. “There’s no room in me now for anything but me and Emily.”