“Sure,” replied the boy. “Come along, Kid.”
It was easy to tell that what interested Jonas was the chance of showing.
So they were still to share a room? Quincy learned this, as he took in the two white-enameled beds and the valise with “J.B.” upon it that he stumbled over as he entered. The sight of his mother and this new event which scarcely he had dared to hope for, seemed to enliven Quincy. He had not given up Jonas. He had had his pangs from him, as from his mother.
“Oh, Jonas,” he exclaimed, “aren’t you glad we’re here?”
“You bet,” said Jonas.
“No—I mean we—”
The elder boy looked down, first quizzically, then with a withering wrinkle upon his eyes and nose and mouth.
“For God’s sake, Quincy—what a sis you are!” Then,—“Ma says for you to stay up here,” and left the room.
So Quincy was alone.
The end of that first month was the beginning of the time when Quincy began once more to breathe in a normal fashion. For long, everything had been so new, all the old ceremonies had been so suddenly replaced, all the comfortable nooks of life which with difficulty he had carved for himself in Harriet were so miserably absent, that life had become a breathless trick like trying to ride bareback (as he had once essayed), or endeavoring not to irritate his sisters. There was, for instance, the problem of eating in the ominous, overbearing dining room, the problem of sleeping in a bed which shone like the exhibition motor in the shop on Main Street, the problem of being comfortable in blouses that had to be kept clean and with thin new stockings that had to be kept whole. Also, there was the problem of loving his mother in a dazzling housegown of blue satin. These were like enemies, besetting the routes of life. And at first they had seemed insuperable. And at last they had faded quite away, and wonder about them, as well as memory, had died in the fresh, general glamor. But now, with his recovery, came a new shock.