Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
It had the "carrying" quality. She did not shake hands; Carry did
and said she was so glad to see him: she had been down home the week
before--had seen his mother and Kitty. Mrs. Wagoner said, "We still keep
our plantation as a country place." Carry said Kitty looked so well; her
new dress was lovely. Mrs. Wagoner said his mother's eyes were worse.
She and Kitty had walked over to see them, to show Kitty's new dress.
She had promised that Mr. Wagoner would do what he could for him
(Jim) on the road. Next month Jim went back to the freight service. He
preferred Dick Rail to Mrs. Wagoner. He got him. Dick was worse than
ever, his appetite was whetted by abstinence; he returned to his attack
with renewed zest. He never tired--never flagged. He was perpetual: he
was remorseless. He made Jim's life a wilderness. Jim said nothing, just
slouched along silenter than ever, quieter than ever, closer than
ever. He took to going on Sunday to another church than the one he had
attended, a more fashionable one than that. The Wagoners went there. Jim
sat far back in the gallery, very far back, where he could just see the
top of Carry's head, her big hat and her face, and could not see Mrs.
Wagoner, who sat nearer the gallery. It had a curious effect on him:
he never went to sleep there. He took to going up-town walking by the
stores--looking in at the windows of tailors and clothiers. Once he
actually went into a shop and asked the price of a new suit of clothes.
(He needed them badly.) The tailor unfolded many rolls of cloth and
talked volubly: talked him dizzy. Jim looked wistfully at them, rubbed
his hand over them softly, felt the money in his pocket; and came out.
He said he thought he might come in again. Next day he did not have the
money. Kitty wrote him she could not leave home to go to school on their
mother's account, but she would buy books, and she was learning; she
would learn fast, her mother was teaching her; and he was the best
brother in the world, the whole world; and they had a secret, but he
must wait.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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