The third morning, just as he had become aware that his overalls were not where he had hung them in the shop, it was announced that all men of less than six months’ service were to be laid off. Basil received four dollars and lost his overalls. Learning that nails are driven from a kneeling position had cost him only carfare.
III
In a large old-fashioned house in the old section of the city lived Basil’s great-uncle, Benjamin Reilly, and there Basil presented himself that evening. It was a last resort—Benjamin Reilly and Basil’s grandfather were brothers and they had not spoken for twenty years.
He was received in the living room by the small, dumpy old man whose inscrutable face was hidden behind a white poodle beard. Behind him stood a woman of forty, his wife of six months, and her daughter, a girl of fifteen. Basil’s branch of the family had not been invited to the wedding, and he had never seen these two additions before.
“I thought I’d come down and see you, Uncle Ben,” he said with some embarrassment.
There was a certain amount of silence.
“Your mother well?” asked the old man.
“Oh, yes, thank you.”
Mr. Reilly waited. Mrs. Reilly spoke to her daughter, who threw a curious glance at Basil and reluctantly left the room. Her mother made the old man sit down.
Out of sheer embarrassment Basil came to the point. He wanted a summer job in the Reilly Wholesale Drug Company.
His uncle fidgeted for a minute and then replied that there were no positions open.
“Oh.”
“It might be different if you wanted a permanent place, but you say you want to go to Yale.” He said this with some irony of his own, and glanced at his wife.
“Why, yes,” said Basil. “That’s really why I want the job.”
“Your mother can’t afford to send you, eh?” The note of pleasure in his voice was unmistakable. “Spent all her money?”
“Oh, no,” answered Basil quickly. “She’s going to help me.”
To his surprise, aid came from an unpromising quarter. Mrs. Reilly suddenly bent and whispered in her husband’s ear, whereupon the old man nodded and said aloud:
“I’ll think about it, Basil. You go in there.”
And his wife repeated: “We’ll think about it. You go in the library with Rhoda while Mr. Reilly looks up and sees.”
The door of the library closed behind him and he was alone with Rhoda, a square-chinned, decided girl with fleshy white arms and a white dress that reminded Basil domestically of the lacy pants that blew among the laundry in the yard. Puzzled by his uncle’s change of front, he eyed her abstractedly for a moment.
“I guess you’re my cousin,” said Rhoda, closing her book, which he saw was The Little Colonel, Maid of Honor.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“I heard about you from somebody.” The implication was that her information was not flattering.
“From who?”
“A girl named Elaine Washmer.”
“Elaine Washmer!” His tone dismissed the name scornfully. “That girl!”
“She’s my best friend.” He made no reply. “She said you thought you were wonderful.”
Young people do not perceive at once that the giver of wounds is the enemy and the quoted tattle merely the arrow. His heart smoldered with wrath at Elaine Washmer.
“I don’t know many kids here,” said the girl, in a less aggressive key. “We’ve only been here six months. I never saw such a stuck-up bunch.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he protested. “Where did you live before?”
“Sioux City. All the kids have much more fun in Sioux City.”
Mrs. Reilly opened the door and called Basil back into the living room. The old man was again on his feet.
“Come down tomorrow morning and I’ll find you something,” he said.
“And why don’t you have dinner with us tomorrow night?” added Mrs. Reilly, with a cordiality wherein an adult might have detected disingenuous purpose.
“Why, thank you very much.”
His heart, buoyant with gratitude, had scarcely carried him out the door before Mrs. Reilly laughed shortly and called in her daughter.
“Now we’ll see if you don’t get around a little more,” she announced. “When was it you said they had those dances?”
“Thursdays at the College Club and Saturdays at the Lake Club,” said Rhoda promptly.
“Well, if this young man wants to hold the position your father has given him, you’ll go to them all the rest of the summer.”
IV
Arbitrary groups formed by the hazards of money or geography may be sufficiently quarrelsome and dull, but for sheer unpleasantness the condition of young people who have been thrust together by a common unpopularity can be compared only with that of prisoners herded in a cell. In Basil’s eyes the guests at the little dinner the following night were a collection of cripples. Lewis and Hector Crum, dullard cousins who were tolerable only to each other; Sidney Rosen, rich but awful; ugly Mary Haupt, Elaine Washmer, and Betty Geer, who reminded Basil of a cruel parody they had once sung to the tune of Jungle Town:
Down below the hill
There lives a pill
That makes me ill,
And her name is Betty Geer.
We had better stop right here…
She’s so fat,
She looks just like a cat,
And she’s the queen of pills.
Moreover, they resented Basil, who was presumed to be “stuck-up,” and walking home afterward, he felt dreary and vaguely exploited. Of course, he was grateful to Mrs. Reilly for her kindness, yet he couldn’t help wondering if a cleverer boy couldn’t have got out of taking Rhoda to the Lake Club next Saturday night. The proposal had caught him unaware; but when he was similarly trapped the following week, and the week after that, he began to realize the situation. It was a part of his job, and he accepted it grimly, unable, nevertheless, to understand how such a bad dancer and so unsociable a person should want to go where she was obviously a burden. “Why doesn’t she just sit at home and read a book,” he thought disgustedly, “or go away somewhere—or sew?”
It was one Saturday afternoon while he watched a tennis tournament and felt the unwelcome duty of the evening creep up on him, that he found himself suddenly fascinated by a girl’s face a few yards away. His heart leaped into his throat and the blood in his pulse beat with excitement; and then, when the crowd rose to go, he saw to his astonishment that he had been staring at a child ten years old. He looked away, oddly disappointed; after a moment he looked back again. The lovely, self-conscious face suggested a train of thought and sensation that he could not identify. As he passed on, forgoing a vague intention of discovering the child’s identity, there was beauty suddenly all around him in the afternoon; he could hear its unmistakable whisper, its never-inadequate, never-failing promise of happiness. “Tomorrow—one day soon now—this fall—maybe tonight.” Irresistibly compelled to express himself, he sat down and tried to write to a girl in New York. His words were stilted and the girl seemed cold and far away. The real image on his mind, the force that had propelled him into this state of yearning, was the face of the little girl seen that afternoon.
When he arrived with Rhoda Sinclair at the Lake Club that night, he immediately cast a quick look around to see what boys were present who were indebted to Rhoda or else within his own sphere of influence. This was just before cutting-in arrived, and ordinarily he was able to dispose of half a dozen dances in advance, but tonight an older crowd was in evidence and the situation was unpromising. However, as Rhoda emerged from the dressing room he saw Bill Kampf and thankfully bore down upon him.
“Hello, old boy,” he said, exuding personal good will. “How about dancing once with Rhoda tonight?”
“Can’t,” Bill answered briskly. “We’ve got people visiting us. Didn’t you know?”
“Well, why couldn’t we swap a dance anyhow?”
Bill looked at him in surprise.
“I thought you knew,” he exclaimed. “Erminie’s here. She’s been talking about you all afternoon.”
“Erminie Bibble!”
“Yes. And her father and mother and her kid sister. Got here this morning.”
Now, indeed, the emotion of two hours before bubbled up in Basil’s blood, but this time he knew why. It was the little sister of Erminie Gilbert Labouisse Bibble whose strangely familiar face had so attracted him. As his mind swung sharply back to a long afternoon on the Kampfs’ veranda at the lake, ages ago, a year ago, a real voice rang in his ear, “Basil!” and a sparkling little beauty of fifteen came up to him with a fine burst of hurry, taking his hand as though she was stepping into the circle of his arm.
“Basil, I’m so glad!” Her voice was husky with pleasure, though she was at the age when pleasure usually hides behind grins and mumbles. It was Basil who was awkward and embarrassed, despite the intention of his heart. He was a little relieved when Bill Kampf, more conscious of his lovely cousin than he had been a year ago, led her out on the floor.
“Who was that?” Rhoda demanded, as he returned in a daze. “I never saw her around.”
“Just a girl.” He scarcely knew what he was saying.
“Well, I know that. What’s her name?”
“Minnie Bibble, from New Orleans.”
“She certainly looks conceited. I never saw anybody so affected in my life.”
“Hush!” Basil protested
