Suddenly he stopped. He quivered. He looked at Jimmie. “What’s the matter?”
It was some time before Jimmie could get his breath. Quite some time. He was choking—choking badly. But when he did recover he loosed the breath again in a tremendous roar of laughter. “Oh, Lord!” said. “Oh, my Lord, Dad! All these years I’ve thought of you as the most self-controlled, self-disciplined man I ever knew! And now!” He chortled again.
“It took Roosevelt to turn you into a thundering infant! No kidding!” He fought again for air. “No fooling! You’ll get apoplexy.”
His father came up standing. “Infant!” he bellowed. “Infant!”
Jimmie’s mirth was only partially quenched by his attempt to regain composure.
“You looked exactly like one. Ten months old. When you take away his rattle! Ye gods! Are many grown people going into spins like that, over the morning paper? Do it again, Dad! Do it some more!” A paroxysm of hilarity bent him double.
His father was still standing. He opened his mouth and closed it. His eyes were raging and his face was still violet. “Son—” he began.
Then Biff said, “Go on. Laugh.” His voice was so odd that even his father looked at him.
Biff was as white as chalk. Around the corners of his mouth was a slack sullenness. The perspiration that had made small damp areas on his upper lip and forehead was now pouring from his entire face. He had a letter in his hand. He looked, Jimmie thought, like a man who has just been hit. In the vivid vocabulary of Jimmie’s memory, that simile meant hit mortally, with a splinter of a bomb or a spear of flying glass. Jimmie seized his brother’s arm strongly and said, “Hey, fellow! What’s wrong?”
“Laugh some more,” Biff replied vacuously, insanely.