They talked on until there was no other sign of life discernible in the neighbourhood, save for the passage of a prowling cat, or the sound of the crickets in the grass. At last he had to go. Early the next morning he was to leave for Atlanta with Mrs. Tucker. Three days he was to be gone. He would return on Friday.
In October they were to be married. Mrs. Phillips’ health was not improving as they had hoped. She was cheerful but she wanted Jane to be happily married before she died. They had decided to live at his house with his mother and Mamie. They’d refurnish it and do over all the rooms. Later on, when he had made lots of money, they’d build.
Mamie and Jane and Kenneth were to go to Atlanta the latter part of September, there to buy the furniture and all the other things, they would need. Mrs. Phillips was too ill to stand the strain of the long journey and the excitement of the shopping.
Jane tiptoed into the house so as not to wake her mother. She returned in a few minutes with a fluffy white mass in her arms. It was her wedding-gown which she was to make herself. They sat silent for a minute at the token of what it meant.
Tears stood in Jane’s eyes when he went down the stairs. He saw them when he looked back to say the last soft good-bye.
“Three days is an awful long time,” she said plaintively.
Of course, there was nothing else for him to do but go back up the steps and kiss her good-bye all over again. …
CHAPTER XVII
Bob was packing for his journey to Cambridge, whistling cheerfully the while. It was certainly great to be going away up to Boston to school. All his life he had wanted to live there for a while where he could learn the things which he knew of only at second hand now. He pictured in his mind how he would arrange his life at school. There’d be none of the kiddish pranks he had read about that college boys did. He was too old for that. He had seen too much of the seamy and sordid side of life to waste his time playing. He’d study every minute he could. He’d make a record in scholarship that would make his mother and Mamie and Kenneth proud of him. He’d go to summer school so as to finish the rest of his college course in two years instead of three. And then, law school. By jiminy, he’d be the best lawyer there was! Not the best coloured lawyer. The best lawyer! Never did youth have more brilliant dreams of life than Bob. He paused at the sound which came from downstairs through the half-opened door. It couldn’t be in Ken’s office, for he had gone to Atlanta with Mrs. Tucker that morning. It sounded like crying—as one would cry who had suffered some great bereavement or terrible misfortune. He went out in the hall and leaned over the balustrade, the better to find out what was the matter.
It was Mamie and his mother. He looked puzzled, for he could think of nothing to make Mamie cry that way. His mother was trying to soothe and calm her as Mamie told her the cause of her weeping. Bob crept down the stairs as softly as he could to hear.