I reminded him that the vice president was Cary Penwick, a cousin of my own, the fear and fascination of childhood’s idolatry. Prince said rather gloomily that he had never heard me mention this cousin, which was not surprising; the last time I saw Cary Penwick he was a wild boy of fourteen, with hair in his eves and a brain full of adventurous mischief. I was an imaginative child of eight years, and memory’s tenderest association with Cary was a mutual and unappeased hunger.
“We roasted corn at the field’s edge and climbed the roof to steal bricks out of the chimney, to build the oven.” I marched on, with Cary borne banner-like before, to relate how the poor boy’s father had been the family skeleton, grandma’s black sheep son, smirched with disgrace, who died in Paris. Finally, Cary’s mother’s family had sent him off to school, from which he consistently ran away, and we never saw him again. He had vowed that one day he would return— At Prince’s laugh, I ended haughtily: “To get even with me for kicking him, when he carried me dripping from the frog pond. I remember that he slapped me. Now, the papers call him a famous collector, and I am sure Cary will help me dispose of the things to advantage.”
Prince dug wells in the mud with his stick. “Of course, Enid, being a relative—but it is safer always to have the opinion of more than one before coming to a settlement.”
And, according to history’s human law, I laughed his caution to the winds.
“Are your feet dry, Miss Enid?”
This being her perennial, I stuck them on the fender and drank tea, while Martha hovered, hen-like and solicitous. “Did you get any, miss?”
As on preceding afternoons, I explained that “The World at Home” did not drag subscribers in with a seine.
“You know that I got one last week, Martha, but the people look for me now. Poor Mr. Petty was at the gate with a flaming sword. I mean, the shovel.”
“Then he wasn’t sober, miss.”
“Obviously not. I let sleeping Pettys lie, since he put me out of the house as ‘them agents.’”