David turned and looked in the car. It was hot and hard to breathe. Thin threads of smoke seeped in from the windows. They writhed about, they trailed upwards to the ceiling. Smoke was where songs had lingered....
III
“...Of course, my dear nephew, you must stay with us until you have found a comfortable and suitable home for yourself in the city....”
So had David’s aunt, Lauretta Deane, written to him and made him somehow doubt the amiability of the lady, despite the fact of her welcome. He had never met the family of his uncle. He felt a significance in this. His mother used at times to talk of Aunt Lauretta as of a fortunately distant fact.
“Your father and Uncle Anthony never did seem to get along,” she said. That perhaps disposed for her of Anthony’s wife.
Mr. Deane answered the bell.... David stepped into a naked hall, hanging in camphored drapery. The varnished floor swept away in parabolic shadows; the bannisters of the stair were a red lacquered flourish, a sort of scrolled battalion along red, lacquered steps. There was his uncle, rather hot, coatless, diminished.
“Well—glad to see you, my boy.... Have a good journey?”
David was looking for more glory. It struck him that the house was bigger, brighter than this man. The traditional Uncle Anthony seemed to require the setting of his visits to the little town. He mumbled amenably.
“Your aunt and your cousins are in the mountains.... I’m alone, as you see. Come in.”
He went before David up the stairs. They sounded hollow and yet they were bright.