It was getting dark as I walked down Huntington Avenue and somebody was
walking rapidly behind me, as if to catch up with me.
“Hallo, Marion!”
I turned, to see Jimmy Odell. He had been hanging around my
lodging-house for days, and was always coaxing me to go to places with
him and declaring that he was in love with me.
I liked Jimmy, though the people where I took my meals told me he was no
good. They said his people had given him every advantage, but that Jimmy
had played all his life and that his mother had spoiled him. However, I
found him a most lovable boy, despite his slangy speech and pretended
toughness of character. Jimmy liked to pretend that he was a pretty
bold, bad man of the world. He was in his junior year at Harvard and
about my own age.
Many a time when it seemed as if I could not stand my life, I was
cheered by Jimmy with his happy, contagious laughter, and the little
“treats” he would give me. Sometimes it was a ball game, sometimes a
show and I had had many dinners and suppers with Jimmy. But Jimmy drank
far too much. He didn’t get exactly drunk, but he carried a flask of
whiskey with him, and he would say to whoever was about:
“Have a drink,” and if no one accepted he would say: “Well, here’s to
you, anyway,” and drink himself.
It was no use my lecturing him about it, for he would just laugh at me
and say:
“All right, grandma, I’ll be good,” and then go right ahead and do it
again.
Once when he told me for the hundredth time that he loved me and begged:
“Come along. Let’s get married and fool ’em all.”