"What is she like?" Dora then demanded. "What does she look like?"
"Don't ask me," John smiled. "I can't tell you. When we walk together she strikes me about here," his hand on his left shoulder. "She has blue eyes, brown wavy hair, a pretty mouth, and a nose with a cute little tilt to it. There are bits of brown freckles on her wrists and cheeks, but they don't matter. If anything, I like them. I wouldn't rub them off. Folks don't say she is pretty--even Sam don't; but why I can't see, for she is simply stunning, and you'll say so, kid, when you see her."
"Well, I won't tell-- I won't tell," Dora promised, returning with lowered interest to her rag things after the flight with him into his empyrean.
Here a voice sounded from the window of Mrs. Trott's room up-stairs.
"Dora, is that John down there?"
"Yes'm. He's just got back."
"Well, tell him to come up here right away."
The order did not need repeating. John stood up, the old practical frown settling on his face. "I wonder what the ---- she wants?" he growled, with fierce emphasis on the omitted word. "I thought she was asleep."
"Come on up, John; I want to see you," Mrs. Trott's querulous voice rang out again, and without replying he turned away. He wore his best suit of clothes, had recently shaved the fuzz from his face, and looked rather more manly than formerly as he strode through the doorway and up the rickety old stairs. Reaching the upper floor, he turned into his mother's room, unceremoniously pushing the door open and standing on the threshold, just as Mrs. Trott, in a soiled wrapper, was getting back into bed after having been to the window. Her hair was in curl-papers, and the little bristling tufts gave to her face an uncouth, bleak look and left her penciled brows to a barren waste of forehead. Her cheeks were still rouged from the night before. A brazen necklace, recently doffed, had left dark streaks on her powdered bust.
"Why didn't you come on in?" Mrs. Trott demanded, irritably. "What did you sit down there and talk with that brat for?"
"Oh, I don't know. What do you want?" He frowned in his turn, and all but growled.
Mrs. Trott kicked the light covering down over her feet and wadded the pillow so that her head was raised higher. "I've been short of money ever since you went off," she explained, pettishly. "When you were here you always had some on Saturday nights, but after you went off you didn't send as much and Jane and I both got in a hole."
"Well, what do you want now?" he asked. "How much?"
"I'll have to think," Mrs. Trott said. "I borrowed five from Jane yesterday. We were playing a little game and I lost. I was about to drop out when Jane backed me. I lost again. My luck was against me, and her, too. Jane needs the five. She is sick and will have to have a doctor.
You know they insist on cash--they won't come here, the silly fools, unless you shake the money in their faces, though they run the accounts of other people for years on a stretch."
"I haven't got that much with me," he gave in, wearily, "but I'm going to the bank after dinner and will get it."
"How much have you got there?" Mrs. Trott inquired.
"That's _my_ business, not yours," he said, with an oath, for under that roof it had always seemed natural for him to swear. "And don't you be nosing into my business, either. You went there once and tried to get money on my name, but don't you do it again. I've turned over a new leaf. I have to. You throw money away like water, on cards, whisky, beer, and what not. I can't keep that up, and I won't. I have to draw the line somewhere."
She raised her head a little higher and fixed her eyes, in their puffy sockets, on him in a sort of groping wonder.
"Why, what has got into you?" she asked, stupidly, and all at once he seemed older to her, older and more dignified, more business-like, more like his dead father, to whom she had been flagrantly untrue.
"Common sense, I reckon," he jerked out. "If I've been a fool I don't always have to stay one. I'm going to need money--for myself, for my _own_ self, do you understand? I--I don't intend to live on here always, either. I'll be of age before long. I've thought it all over. I'm willing to set aside a reasonable amount to help you along, but I'm done with these big drafts on me."
"John, what ails you?" There was a touch of shrinking fear in the almost childish appeal. "You have never talked like this before."
"Well, I might as well begin," he sniffed. "You have to be told. I've seen how other folks live away from here, and I want a change. I'm sick of it all--you and Jane and the gang you hang out with."
"John Trott," his mother gasped, "you sha'n't talk to me this way. I won't stand it."
"Well, then, think it all over," he answered. "I know my business. You can look out for yours. I know when I've had enough, and I _have_ had enough."
He turned and left her. She heard him in his room, the sordid cubbyhole he had occupied since he was a child, and somehow now she pictured its narrow confines and condition as being unsuited to the new and unaccountable dignity into which he had grown in his short absence. What could it mean? What?
She got up, slid her silk-dressed feet into a dainty pair of black-satin slippers, drew her wrapper about her, and went into Jane Holder's darkened room.
"Are you asleep, Jane?" she inquired, half timidly.
"How could I be, with you yelling out of your window to John at the top of your lungs?" Jane turned on her side as she answered. "Then it was wow-wow-wow! in your room after he came up. Oh, I'm sick, sick, sick!
You let that sneaking Kelly mix those last drinks on me. I heard you snickering when he did it."
"Never mind; it will go off," Mrs. Trott said, and she sat down on the edge of the bed. "It always does. Listen to me, Jane. Something has happened to John."
"Happened? What do you mean?" Jane softly moaned and gagged, her hand at her thin throat.
"Why, I don't know! That's what I want to see you about. Somebody must have been meddling--talking to him. He has a queer look in the eyes. He fairly glared at me and spoke to me-- Well, he never did the like before. I was--was actually afraid of him. It looked to me once as if he was going to pounce on me. Do you remember how Judge Manis talked to us the day he remitted our fine, dismissed the court, and talked to us in private?"
"My God! woman," Jane groaned, desperately, "what are you--"
"John looked and talked like the judge did," Mrs. Trott ran on, with a little impatient wave of her hand. "I was glad he went to his room.
There is no telling what he would have said about us both. Somebody has been meddling, I tell you, putting notions in the boy's head. Oh, he has changed--changed!"
"Spoiled, by that new job, I reckon," Jane Holder whined. "The new outfit Sam Cavanaugh gave him has stuck him up. Boys turn like that all of a sudden when they reach the gosling stage. He has been dreamy all his life, and he is getting his eyes open and thinks he is the whole show. You will have to put up with it, that's all."
"I don't know what to make of it-- I don't, I don't!" Mrs. Trott stood up, sighed heavily, yawned, and left the room. Outside she met Dora coming from John's room.
"I asked him what he wanted for dinner," the child remarked, "but he said he wasn't going to eat here. He's going down to the restaurant--said he didn't want me to cook and drudge for him. He is funny, Mrs. Trott. He is not one bit like he used to be."
"I don't care where he eats," Mrs. Trott answered, wearily. "We haven't much in the safe, anyway. Is the flour all gone?"
"Yes'm, and the coffee and bacon. I used the last sprinkling of flour for the batter-cakes yesterday."
"Well, stop the grocery-wagon the next time it goes by," Mrs. Trott concluded. "Tell the boy I'll have that money for him to-day. You left a great litter out in the yard. Go clean it up. If you have to play, play in the back yard. People passing will talk about the way you look."
CHAPTER XIX
That night at the supper-table Cavanaugh took his wife into his confidence and told her of the love-affair which was culminating in such a satisfactory way to him as well as to John. "You see," he said, "when it first flared up between them, I was dead afraid that the boy might settle up there, or move away, and I'd lose him as a future partner, and a good one at that, but I clinched all that to-day." Cavanaugh laughed slyly as he told of the Carrol cottage and how pleased John had been with it. The old man talked at considerable length, but suddenly noticed that his wife, seated in the lamplight across the table, had not uttered a word, which struck him as being truly remarkable. Of all things in the dull routine of her life, engagements and weddings of young persons hitherto had interested her most.
"Well, well," the contractor said, suddenly. "What do you think of it?
You don't, somehow, look glad. I always thought you liked John, and all this time I've been thinking how tickled you'd be to hear about him and his girl."
Mrs. Cavanaugh blinked. Her face was very grave, her fat chin set firm in accordance with her resolute jaws.
"Why didn't you write me about it, along with all the rest of the stuff you had to say?" she asked, in a tone of actual accusation. "This is the first intimation to me of it."
"Well, for one thing I didn't feel at liberty to do it." Cavanaugh floundered in his slow surprise. "The two were just sorter getting under headway, as you might say, and nothing had been decided on positively. I don't think the final word has been said yet, either, and--"
"Oh, then there is still time-- I mean--" But Mrs. Cavanaugh, avoiding her husband's blank stare, suddenly broke off what she was saying and sat gazing fixedly into her coffee-cup.