The men slapped their thighs and guffawed.
Old Man Mulroy, drooling tobacco juice at the corners of his toothless mouth, grinned slyly.
A job in town. A paycheck in his pocket. The boy whistled gayly as he marched along.
He looked in over the swinging half-doors of the Red Moon Bar and felt that the time would never come when he would be twenty-one and could stand with one foot on the brass rail and drink with the rest of the men. A new and brilliant bock-beer billy goat was charging out of a sign on the back wall. A large red bull, and a superior cowboy rolling a cigarette with one hand advertised a well-known brand of cigarette tobacco.
Peter wished that he dared to smoke on the street. He wished quite violently that he could roll a cigarette with one hand like the superior cowboy in the picture.
He paused before the Palace theater where he examined the bright billboards displaying a serial queen poised in midair between precipice and precipice, another view of the same harassed young woman to whom the villain was touching a torch, while the hero of the affair looked on calmly from his rearing mount.
Life was very full and romantic, thought Peter Brailsford. He realized that he could see every movie that came to Brailsford Junction without making the least impression upon his nearly inexhaustible weekly stipend. He could even buy himself a new suit and some dazzling new ties.
A room of his own, no school work. He could skip church and Sunday School if he wished.
But no, he could not. A momentary cloud passed over his sunny landscape as Peter came abreast of the Dingle Brothers' General Store into which Temperance Crandall was just disappearing. He really liked the fussy creature even if she did make him go to church, knit him wristlets which he dared not wear and equally dared not refuse, brought him soapstones on chilly autumn nights, and saw that his flannel nightgown was warmed before the base burner before he went to bed. But he did wish that she would be a little less curious as to where he went evenings and what time he got in.
Rooms were scarce in Brailsford Junction with the "Trailer" booming. Peter had taken what he could get. He could abide the games of Authors and Flinch played with Temperance and her mother in the latter's upstairs bedroom, with the oil heater making weird patterns of light and shadow on the ceiling, and the kerosene lamp spluttering. But he did not like to be crossquestioned about Maxine Larabee.