XXV
Easter came to New York, as it did to other places, and with it came Billy Huntington and Philip to the Thatchers. "Always have something to radiate from," some one once advised, "if only a fly-speck." To Billy, Boston was the fly-speck, entirely satisfactory as a point of radiation but far too respectable, much too decorous, and altogether too near home to be associated with his idea of a good time. Billy's life had been running so long on high gear that the lower speeds had almost been forgotten. This was typical of the times rather than a suggestion that the boy himself exceeded the speed limit. It was the limit which insisted upon exceeding itself, and he simply extended his pace to keep up with everything around him,—the limit of yesterday kept becoming the commonplace of to-day.
In New York Billy always found the limit just enough ahead of what it was in Boston to give him the additional thrill which added zest to his life. The very atmosphere seemed charged with a different ozone, filled with microbes impelling incessant activity. Everything not already in motion seemed straining at its leash, impatient to dash forward at the earliest opportunity. No one ever seemed satisfied to where he was, but hurried onward to somewhere else or something different. It was the city of unrest but never of discontent, for the changing, kaleidoscopic conditions came as a result of a demand from those who had the price to pay. It fascinated Billy, as it fascinates its tens of thousands, and as he leaned back in the Thatchers' limousine, held up by the lines of traffic on Fifth Avenue, then dashing forward to make up for lost time between the intersecting streets, he turned his beaming face toward his friend and murmured contentedly, "This is the life!"
"The ride home gets worse every time I take it," was Philip's comment. "If things keep on they will have to make the Avenue a double-decker street."
"By that time New-Yorkers will ride home in their aeroplanes," Billy replied. "You can't hold them down by a little thing like congestion."
Billy loved it, and for him the car turned off the Avenue all too soon, in its final dash for the East Side. He wanted more time between his arrival at the Grand Central Station and his appearance at the Thatcher mansion to shake off what he felt to be his Boston provincialism, and to feel outwardly as well as inwardly the real New-Yorker which he craved to be.
"What are we doing to-night?" Billy asked as they drew near their destination.
"I wrote Dad to get tickets for some show. You said you wanted to see everything in town."