"I go to Doolittle and Pray's."
"That's the big private school in Marlborough Street, isn't it?"
The fat boy made the inarticulate grunt which with most Americans
means "Yes." "I was put down for Groton, only mother wouldn't let me
leave home. I'm going to Harvard."
"I'm going to Harvard, too. What class do you expect to be in?"
The fat boy replied that he expected to be in the class of
nineteen-nineteen.
Tom said he expected to be in that class himself.
"Now I've got to beat it to the Latin School. So long!"
"So long!"
Tom carried to his school in the Fenway an unusual feeling of elation.
With friendly intent someone had approached him from the world outside.
It was not the first time it had ever happened, but it was the first
time it had ever happened in just this way. He could see already that
the fat boy was not one of those he would have chosen for a friend; but
he was so lonely that he welcomed anyone. Moreover, he divined that
the fat boy was lonely, too. Boys of that type, the Miss Nancy and
the mother's darling type, were often consumed by loneliness, and no
one ever pitied them. Few went to their aid when other boys "picked"
on them, but of those few Tom Whitelaw was always one. He found them,
once you had accepted their mannerisms, as well worth knowing as other
boys, while they spared him a scrap of admiration. It was possible that
in this fat boy he might find the long-sought fellow who would not
"turn him down" on discovering that he lived in Grove Street. Being
turned down in this way had made him sick at heart so often that he
had decided never any more to make or trust advances. In suffering
temptation again he assured himself that it would be for the last time
in his life.
On returning from school he looked for the boy in Louisburg Square, but
he was not there. A few hundred yards farther, however, he came in for
another adventure.
The January morning had been mild, with melting snow. By midday the
wind had shifted to the north, with a falling thermometer. By late
afternoon the streets were coated with a glaze of ice. Tom could
swagger down the slope of Grove Street easily enough in the security of
rubber soles.
But not so a girl, whose slippers and high French heels made her
helpless on the steep glare. Having ventured over the brow of the hill,
she found herself held. A step into the air would have been as easy as
another on this slippery descent. The best she could do was to sway in
the keen wind, keeping her balance with the grace of one of the blue
spruces which used to be blown about at Bere. Her outstretched arms
waved up and down, as a blue spruce waves its branches. Coming abreast
of her, Tom found her laughing to herself, but on seeing him she
laughed frankly and aloud.
"Oh, catch me! I'm going to tumble! Ow-w-w!"
Tom snatched at one hand, while she caught him by the shoulder with the
other.
"Saved! Wasn't it lucky that you came along? You're the Whitelaw boy,
aren't you?"
Tom admitted that he was, though his new sensations, with this
exquisite creature clinging to him like a drowning man to his rescuer,
choked the monosyllable in his throat. Though he had often in a
scrimmage protected little boys, he had never before been thrown into
this comic, laughing tussle with a girl. It had the excuse for itself
that she couldn't stand unless he held her up. He held her firmly,
looking into her dancing eyes with his first emotional consciousness of
a girl's prettiness.
His arm supporting her, she ventured on a step. "I'm Maisie Danker,"
she explained, while taking it. "I see you going in and out the house."
"I've never seen you."
"Perhaps you've seen me and not noticed me."
"I couldn't," he declared, with vehemence. "I've never seen you before
in my life. If I had...."
Her high heels so nearly slipped from under her that they were
compelled to hold each other as if in an embrace. "If you had--what?"
He knew what, but the words in which to say it needed a higher mode of
utterance. The red lips, the glowing cheeks, had the vitality of the
lively eyes. A red tam-o'-shanter, a red knitted thing like a heavenly
translation of his own earthly sweater, were bewitchingly diabolic when
worn with a black skirt, black stockings, and black shoes.
As he did not respond to her challenge, she went on with her
self-introduction. "I guess you haven't seen me, because I only arrived
three days ago. I'm Mrs. Danker's niece. Live in Nashua. Worked in the
woolen mills there. Now I've come to visit my aunt for the winter."
For the sake of hearing her speak, he asked if she was going to work in
Boston.
"I don't know. Maybe I'll take singing lessons. Got a swell voice."
If again he was dumb it was because of the failure of his faculties.
Nothing in his experience had prepared him for the give-and-take of
a badinage in which the surface meanings were the less important.
Foolish and helpless, unable to show his manly superiority except in
the strength with which he held her up, he got a lesson in the new art
there and then.
"Ever dance?"
"I'm never asked."
"Oh, it's you that ought to do the asking."
"I mean that I'm never asked where there's dancing going on."
"Gee, you don't have to be. You just find a girl--and go."
"But I don't know how to dance."
"I'll teach you."
Slipping and sliding, with cries of alarm on her part, and stalwart
assurances on his, they approached their own doorstep.
"Ow-w-w! Hold me! I'm going!"
"No you're not--not while I've got you."
"But I don't want to grab you so hard."
"That's all right. I can stand it."
"But I can't. I'm not used to it."
"Then it's a very good time to begin."
"What's the use of beginning if there's nothing to go on with?"
"How do you know there won't be?"
"Well, what can there be?"
Had Miss Danker always waited for answers to her questions Tom would
have been more nonplussed than he was. But the game which he didn't
know at all she knew thoroughly, according to her lights. She never
left him at a loss for more than a few seconds at a time. Her method
being that of touch-and-go, reserving to herself the right of coming
back again, she carried his education one step farther still.
"Don't you ever go to the movies?"
He replied that he had gone once or twice with Honey, but not often.
To be on the same breezy level as herself, he added in explanation:
"Haven't got the dough."
"But the movies don't take dough, not hardly any."
"They take more than I've got."
"More than you've got? Gee! Then you can't have anything at all."
It was not so much a taunt as it was a statement, and yet it was a
statement with a little taunt in it. For once driven to bravado, he
gave away a secret.
"Well, I haven't--except what's in the bank."
"Oh, you've got money in the bank, have you?"
"Sure! But I'm keeping it to go to college."
She stared at him as if he had been a duck-billed rabbit, or some
variety of fauna hitherto unknown.
"Gee! I should think a fellow who had money in the bank would want to
blow some of it on having a good time--a fellow with any jazz."
Once more she spared him discomfiture. Slipping into the hallway, she
said over her shoulder as he followed her: "How old are you?"
"Sixteen."
She flashed round at him. "Sixteen! Gee! I thought you was my age if
you was a day. Honest I did. I'm eighteen, an old lady compared with
you."
"Oh, but boys are always older than girls, for their age."
"You are, sure. Anyways, you saved me on that slippery hill, and I
think you ought to have a kiss for it. Come, baby, kiss your poor old
ma."
Though the hallway was dark, the kiss had to be given and taken
furtively. Whatever it was to Maisie Danker, to Tom Whitelaw it was
the entrance to a higher and an increased life. The pressure of her
lips on his sent through his frame a dynamic glow he had not supposed
to be among nature's possibilities. Moreover, it threw light on that
experience as to which he had mused ever since he had first talked
confidentially to Bertie Tollivant. Though instinct had taught him
something in the intervening years, he had up to this minute gained
nothing in the way of practical discovery. Now an horizon that had been
dark was lifting to disclose a wonderland.
With her light laugh Maisie had run into her aunt's apartment, and
shut the door. Tom began heavily, pensively, to climb the stairs. But
halfway up he paused to mark off another stage in his perceptions.
"So that's what it's like! That's why they all think so much about
it--and try to hush it up!"