The Inger went on down the street. The bulletin board was like a window opened abruptly upon another world, and closed again. Again the quiet and soft brilliance of Pennsylvania Avenue came to meet him. He turned and looked back at that dim, watchful dome.
“Nothin’ to stir a man up to enlist here,” he thought. “This town looks like the war’d been put to bed.”
He looked in at the door of the New Willard, saw the lobby and the corridor unaccountably filled with women, and retreated. On the street he looked down at himself in slow speculation.
“I donno but what I’d look better in some differ’nt clothes,” he thought, in surprise.
When he returned to the house, Lory had gone to bed, and he felt a vague disappointment. He had wanted to tell her about it. Yet, in the morning, when he tried to tell her, all that he found to say was:
“It’s a nice, neat town. Everybody minds their own business. I tell you, a fellow’d have his nerve to get drunk here.”
Against her aunt’s will, Lory was to begin her search for work that day. There were virtually no advertisements for help. She started early to find an employment agency. The Inger went with her, and when they were alone in the street, she turned to him.
“Don’t you leave me keep you here a minute,” she said earnestly. “You go when you’re ready—you know that.”
“Go where?” he said. “Where’ll I go?”