"Somebody to talk to you, Neale," she said, seeing him sitting up. Neale's father might note he was no longer a child, Neale's mother might keep her hands from fussing over him, but for Katie he would always be the little boy she had helped to bring up. She laid her hand on his head now, and Neale did not mind. "_You_ answer," he said stolidly. "It's him that's always telephonin'," she explained. "He's after wantin' you to go and play tennis." "You tell him I can't go," Neale repeated. Katie retreated astonished. Neale heard the sound of her voice at the telephone two flights below. Then she shouted up, "Neale!" He went to the stairs and answered crossly, "What?" "He wants to know will you be goin' this afternoon?" "_No!_" shouted Neale, leaning over the banisters. In a moment she cried again, "He wants to know will you be goin' to-morrow morning?" "NO!" shouted Neale again, and going into the bathroom locked the door behind him. When rather damp as to hair, he came out, silence and the smell of frying bacon told him that Katie had left the telephone to get his breakfast ready. Gee Whiz! He didn't want any breakfast, not with a taste like that in his mouth. * * * * * To act the part of a lone wolf of sixteen, one must read poetry. He had never read much poetry except some of Milton's Paradise Lost, for a specially loathed English Literature course at Hadley. But there were plenty of poetry books in the library at home. After some false starts, Neale began to know his way among them, concentrating on the slim volumes with pasteboard covers and paper backs. "Beneath the bludgeonings of chance ..." Yes, Neale too would hold up an unbowed, bloody head. "... without fear, without wish, Insensate save of a dull crushed ache in my heart...." ... "Just to reach the dreaming, And the sleep." Sitting alone in the darkened library how Neale soaked himself in this sort of thing, hunting up one page and down another till he found the voice that spoke to him. "The irresponsive silence of the lands The irresponsive sounding of the sea Breathe but one language and one voice to me Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof!" When Katie's carpet-sweeper and feather-duster and kind, gossiping voice sounded too close, he escaped out of doors, but not on his bicycle. That, like his tennis-racket brought up painful memories. Every evening he walked to the Boulevard, and gazed over the Hackensack meadows till the sun set. "No sweet thing left to savor; no sad thing left to fear...."