At six minutes after four o'clock on the second afternoon following
Julia's return, Noble Dill closed his own gate behind him and set forth
upon the four-minute walk that would bring him to Julia's. He wore a bit
of scarlet geranium in the buttonhole of his new light overcoat; he
flourished a new walking-stick and new grey gloves. As for his
expression, he might have been a bridegroom.
Passing the mouth of an alley, as he swung along the street, he was
aware of a commotion, of missiles hurled and voices clashed. In this
alley there was a discord: passion and mockery were here inimically
intermingled.
Casting _a_ glance that way, Noble could see but one person; a boy of
fourteen who looked through a crack in a board fence, steadfastly
keeping an eye to this aperture and as continuously calling through it,
holding his head to a level for this purpose, but at the same time
dancing--and dancing tauntingly, it was conveyed--with the other parts
of his body. His voice was now sweet, now piercing, and again far too
dulcet with the overkindness of burlesque; and if, as it seemed, he was
unburdening his spleen, his spleen was a powerful one and gorged. He
appeared to be in a torment of tormenting; and his success was proved by
the pounding of bricks, parts of bricks and rocks of size upon the other
side of the fence, as close to the crack as might be.
"Oh, dolling!" he wailed, his tone poisonously amorous. "Oh, dolling
Henery! Oo's dot de mos' booful eyes in a dray bid nasty world. Henery!
Oh, _has_ I dot booful eyes, dolling Pattywatty? Yes, I _has_! I _has_
dot pretty eyes!" His voice rose unbearably. "_Oh_, what prettiest eyes
I dot! Me and Herbie Atwater! _Oh_, my booful eyes! Oh, my _booful_----"
But even as he reached this apex, the head, shoulders, and arms of
Herbert Atwater rose momentarily above the fence across the alley,
behind the tormentor. Herbert's expression was implacably resentful, and
so was the gesture with which he hurled an object at the comedian
preoccupied with the opposite fence. This object, upon reaching its
goal, as it did more with a splash than a thud, was revealed as a
tomato, presumably in a useless state. The taunter screamed in
astonishment, and after looking vainly for an assailant, began
necessarily to remove his coat.
Noble, passing on, thought he recognized the boy as one of the Torbin
family, but he was not sure, and he had no idea that the episode was in
any possible manner to be connected with his own recent history. How
blindly we walk our ways! As Noble flourished down the street, there
appeared a wan face at a prison window; and the large eyes looked out
upon him wistfully. But Noble went on, as unwitting that he had to do
with this prison as that he had to do with Master Torbin's tomato.
The face at the window was not like Charlotte Corday's, nor was the
window barred, though the prisoner knew a little solace in wondering if
she did not suggest that famous picture. For all purposes, except during
school hours, the room was certainly a cell; and the term of
imprisonment was set at three days. Uncle Joseph had been unable to
remain at the movies forever: people do have to go home eventually,
especially when accompanied by thirteen-year-old great-nieces. Florence
had finally to face the question awaiting her; and it would have been
better for her had she used less imagination in her replies.
Yet she was not wholly despondent as her eyes followed the disappearing
figure of Noble Dill. His wholesome sprightliness was visible at any
distance; and who would not take a little pride in having been even the
mistaken instrument of saving so gay a young man from the loss of his
reason? No; Florence was not cast down. Day-after-to-morrow she would
taste Freedom again, and her profoundest regret was that after all her
Aunt Julia was not to be married. Florence had made definite plans for
the wedding, especially for the principal figure at the ceremony. This
figure, as Florence saw things, would have been that of the "Flower
Girl," naturally a niece of the bride; but she was able to dismiss the
bright dream with some philosophy. And to console her for everything,
had she not a star in her soul? Had she not discovered that she could
write poetry whenever she felt like it?
Noble passed from her sight, but nevertheless continued his radiant
progress down Julia's Street. Life stretched before him, serene,
ineffably fragrant, unending. He saw it as a flower-strewn sequence of
calls upon Julia, walks with Julia, talks with Julia by the library
fire. Old Mr. Atwater was to be away four days longer, and Julia, that
great-hearted bride-not-to-be, had given him her promise.
Blushing, indeed divinely, she had promised him upon her sacred word,
never so long as she lived, to be engaged to anybody at all.