A tournament was taking place in the kitchen. The students were being made to sing the songs of the various colleges from which they came. The girls at the silverware-sink sang the song of Texas Wesleyan. Then a man and a girl at the cups and saucers table sang “Wisconsin, thy halls are ever fair.” Then the gray-eyed girl who was working beside Brush was called upon for the song of McKenna College in Ohio. She made a speech first, saying that she had no ear and no voice, but that she would do what she could so as not to be an exception. She turned out to be a monotone, but her manner and her sportsmanship were so pleasing that she received an ovation. Then came a man from Georgia Tech, and a girl from Missoula. Then a Swedish cook, who had never been to college, but who had cooked for the students at Upsala, sang one of their songs. Then a demand arose for a song from the superintendent. No one had liked her very much, but from this evening, when she had turned very red and did what she could with the Goucher College song, opinion turned in her favor. Then the newcomer, George Brush, was called upon. He sang his Alma Mater so beautifully that all the workers held their breaths; he, however, went on the while swiftly and silently polishing glasses. The workers crowded about him, dishcloths in hands, asking him how long he was staying in the camp. Presently the superintendent called for silence by beating on a dishpan. “It’s nine o’clock,” she said. “At this rate we’ll never get done. Hurry, everybody; let’s finish up as soon as possible.” Whereupon there followed a last ten minutes of concentrated work.
Brush whispered to the gray-eyed girl, “Can I call on you now?”
“What did you say?”
“Can I pay a call on you as soon as we’re through?”
“Why . . .” she began, hesitatingly, . . . “why, yes.”
“I’d like very much to talk to you.”
They worked on in silence. At the signal for release there was a wild rush for the door on the part of those who wished to claim the canoes reserved for the workers. The superintendent crossed the room and, holding herself very straight, said to Brush: “I have a place vacant, if you’d like to stay and work in the dining-room.”
“Thank you. I must leave tomorrow noon,” he said, his eyes anxiously fixed on the back of the gray-eyed girl, who was going out of the door.
When he caught up with the girl he said, “Would you like to sit on the bench at the end of the pier?”
She did not answer. He saw that she had changed her mind and was hunting for the words with which to excuse herself. He said, abruptly and with unexpected intensity: “I know you must be pretty tired after all this extra work at the week-end, but I wish you’d make an exception for me. I’d rather call on you tomorrow, only I must leave before noon, and I guess we both have a good deal to do in the morning. So as a great favor would you let me call on you now?”
She looked at him. “We can sit in the clubroom,” she said, briefly, and led the way to the farmhouse that had been set aside as a dormitory for the waitresses. The house, as they approached it, was in a state of bedlam. Girls’ voices could be heard calling from room to room. “Louise, lend me your sandals.” “You won’t need a sweater; you’ll die in it.” Several young men were waiting at the steps. A girl appeared at a window on the second floor and called out, “Where’s Jessie?”
“Here I am,” said the gray-eyed girl, quietly.
“Jessie, honey, can I borrow your bandana?”
“Yes. Only, do be quiet when you come in, Hilda.”
The parties went off in a shower of excited conversation, and the house promptly fell into a profound silence. Jessie led Brush into the clubroom on the first floor. It was fitted out with the castoff furniture of the social rooms farther down the slope: a cardtable one of whose legs was mended with adhesive tape, a dilapidated leather center, some kitchen chairs. It was in great confusion. Jessie began mechanically putting it in order, gathering up the pillows, motion-pictures magazines, ukuleles and tennis rackets. She sat down on the couch and began untying the ribbon that bound her hair.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“George Marvin Brush. I was born in Michigan. I’m a traveling salesman in school books. I came to this camp to see a man on business. This evening I asked if I could help in the kitchen, because I like to be where students are and where people are working. I’ve had to do that kind of work almost all my life.”
Jessie leaned far back on the couch, slipped the ribbon off her hair, and shook her head from side to side. She listened to Brush with abstracted self-possession. “You have a fine voice,” she said. “Everybody hoped you were going to stay on and work here.”
“I wish I could.”
“Won’t you sit down?”
“Thank you.”
Jessie rested her head on her elbows and looked at the ceiling. The pause that fell was so alarming to Brush that he broke it by moving his chair forward a few inches and beginning with gravity: “I live traveling around on trains all the time and I meet a lot of people, but almost everybody I meet depresses me really terribly. Why, just this afternoon and evening in this camp I’ve met the most depressing people and it was beginning to have a bad effect on me. And then I saw you and I knew at once that you were a very fine person, and I can’t tell you what a difference it made. So this talk we’re having is very important to me; and as we haven’t much time, you being so tired and everything, I want you to forgive me if I seem to be pretty personal on so short an acquaintance. I want you to know who I am and what I’m like so that I can write letters to you.”
Slowly and a little guardedly Jessie began to sit up straight. She now fixed her eyes on his, full of surprise, but without fear or repugnance.
“There’s no one in the whole world that I get any pleasure writing letters to,” he continued. “So when I meet a person as fine as you, I don’t want to lose the chance to know you better. And so that we can get to be . . . almost friends, I want to tell you who I am and what I’m interested in. Is that all right?”
Jessie blushed slightly. “Yes,” she said.
“Well, as I said, my name is George Marvin Brush. I’m twenty-three years old. I graduated two years ago from the Shiloh Baptist College in Walling, South Dakota. I’m a Baptist and I’m pretty religious. I grew up on a farm in Michigan . . . Can I ask you to tell me a few things like that about yourself?”
The girl drew in her chin abruptly, as though she were about to make a rude answer. She thought better of it, however, and said, with only a touch of curtness: “My name is Jessie Mayhew. I’m twenty-two years old. I’m a senior at McKenna College in Ohio. When I graduate I’m going to be a teacher. I’m Methodist.”
The gray eyes looked coolly into the blue.
“Can I ask you . . . have you a father and mother?”
“No,” said Jessie. After a pause she added, with assumed casualness: “I was brought up in an orphanage and then I was adopted by some people who died. I’ve supported myself since second year high school.”
“I guess we’re pretty much alike in some ways,” said Brush. The ticking of the alarm clock on the mantel filled the room. “There isn’t much more to tell about me. I grew up on the farm. I’ve got a father and mother and two brothers, both older. One of my brothers went away to be a sailor; the other’s still on the farm. I go back to see them Christmas, but . . . you know, I feel like an orphan, too, almost. I love’m, of course, but always there is a kind of wall between them and me. You see, they didn’t want me to go to college.” He scanned her face to see the effect of this severe indictment. “So I worked my way through, just as you’ve been doing. You’d know that I’m not bragging when I tell you that I got the highest grades of anybody, and I was captain of track. I’d have been captain of football and baseball, too, only, working all the time, I didn’t have time for practice and I had to drop them. I know without your telling me that you get high grades.”
“Yes,” said Jessie, reddening again, “I got all A’s.”
Brush smiled. He smiled very seldom. “Before I ask you to let me write you letters,” he continued, “it’s only fair I tell you my faults. I think you ought to know that there are some things about me that are hard to like. What I mean is that people are always getting mad at me and . . . even disgusted. But before I tell you my faults, I want you to know that since my conversion I haven’t done anything bad intentionally. Naturally I haven’t told a lie, except one, when I told a man that I’d once been to New York City. The next day I went back to the town where he was and told him I hadn’t. And my other faults, like saying things in a temper and being tight with money, I’ve always apologized for those pretty soon after.”
“Why do people get disgusted with you?” asked Jessie.
“Because my ideas aren’t the same as other people’s. For instance, I was put in jail the other day because they didn’t like my ideas about money.” Whereupon he told the whole story of his arrest in Armina, adding to it accounts of his theories of voluntary poverty, pacifism, the punishment of criminals, and the story of his previous incarceration. “But even when I don’t get taken to jail,” he concluded, “I’ve always been called crazy. Do you see what I mean.”
“Yes.”
“Does that make you think I’m an . . . an inconvenient sort of person to know?”
“No.”
“I don’t mind my friends telling me once in a while that I’m crazy—as a joke, you know—but do you think . . . have you begun to feel like calling me crazy in earnest?”
“No,” said Jessie. “I don’t care anything what other people think. I like people to be different.”
“Then I want to tell you about the three big secret disappointments in my life. They’re getting to be less and less all the time, and when I can tell them to a person like you I see that they have no reason to be important at all. The first one is . . . is that at college the fellows never elected me to one of the three literary societies. I was the top student in the whole college and I was the captain of my teams, but they never elected me to Philomathian or Eunostia or to the Colville Society. I used to feel pretty badly about that; I used to wonder why they couldn’t stand me. And the second disappointment, Jessie, was something that one of my teachers said to me. He was my prof, in Religion A 6, and I admired him more than any other that was there. I used to take questions to him at his house and I thought he liked it. He used to get mad at me often, but just joking mad. You know how it’d be. But one time he got really mad. He said: ‘You’ve got a closed mind, Brush, an obstinate, closed mind. It’s not worth wasting time on you,’ he said. ‘I wash my hands of you,’ he said; ‘you’ll never get anywhere!’ Imagine someone saying that! ‘Now go away,’ he said. ‘Get away from me. Don’t trouble me any more.’ You know that was awful to me. Sometimes it comes back to me still, like it was the moment he said it, and the sweat—I mean the perspiration—comes out on my forehead. I don’t want to live if I’ve got a closed mind and can’t get anywhere—anywhere in thinking, I mean. But I don’t believe what he said any more. I keep getting new good ideas all the time. I learn things as I go, at least that’s the way it seems to me. As to the third disappointment, I don’t want to tell you that just yet, but I’ll tell you some day. But, Jessie, I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m miserable or anything; because, really, at bottom, I’m the happiest man I’ve ever met. Sometimes it looks like everyone’s unhappy except me. Just today in this camp I met such a mess of unhappy people that it began to get me; and then I saw you and I felt better right away.” There was a pause, at the end of which he added, lamely; “So . . . I guess . . . that’s how it stands.”
Jessie said, without sharpness and with the beginning of a smile, “You do talk a lot.”
“I know,” he agreed, eagerly, “but I had to talk fast for lots of reasons.” He gazed enthusiastically at her face a moment, then rose and said: “Will you let me give you a present to remember me by? This wrist watch is brand new and it’s the best one I’ve ever had.”
Jessie moved off the couch quickly. “No, no,” she said, “I never like to have presents from people. I never like to. It doesn’t mean I don’t like people . . . but I don’t like to take presents from them. Thank you just the same, though. Now, Mr. Brush, we’re not old friends, and I don’t like you to pretend we are. I’m interested in what you’re saying about yourself,” she added, seeing how crestfallen Brush had become. “I didn’t say what I said in order to send you away, because I like what you’ve been saying.”
“Will you tell me a few things about how you grew up?” asked Brush, sadly returning the watch to his own wrist.
Jessie remained standing. She began to walk back and forth, as though to mark the casualness of what she chose to say. “Well, as I told you, I’m an orphan. I was found in a field. First I lived in an orphanage. That was near Cleveland, Ohio. Some people think I look Slovak. I don’t know and I don’t think it matters. When I was ten I was adopted by an old German shoemaker and his wife. They both died and ever since second year at high school I’ve supported myself by working in a hotel. I’m majoring in Biology and some day I’ll either teach Biology or maybe I’ll try to be a doctor.”
“You don’t believe,” began Brush, fearfully—“you don’t believe in all that about evolution, do you?”
“Why, yes, of course I do.”
Brush almost whispered: “You don’t think the Bible’d tell a lie, do you? Do you mean you can’t see there’s a difference as big as the whole world between a human being with a soul and a monkey jumping around in a tree?”
There was an awful silence. Then Brush put another fateful question: “You don’t believe in women smoking cigarettes, do you?”
Jessie stopped and looked at him. “Do you think such things are important?”
“Yes, I do—terribly important.”
“Well, I don’t. I hardly smoke any, myself, but I like to see women doing things that show they can be taken just as seriously as men are.” Her eyes remained on him. She saw how crushed he was. “I’m surprised that you’re the kind of person that still thinks such things are important. I was just beginning to think you were the only young man I ever met who wasn’t silly.”
Brush continued to look at the floor. He said: “My vacation comes in November. Can I come to McKenna College and see you then?”
Jessie began walking up and down again. “You can do what you like, I guess,” she said. “It wouldn’t do any good, though. There wouldn’t be anything to talk about, if you have ideas like that. Besides . . . I live by myself. For these years, anyway, I’m enough, just myself. Besides, I haven’t really got time for any new friends. Ever since sophomore year I’ve been head waiter in the dining-hall, and the rest of the time I study.”
“But can I come?”
“Yes, you can come, like anybody else.”
“I mean . . . would you go for a walk with me? Or have dinner or something?”
“Yes.”
“Well, good-by,” said Brush, putting out his hand.
“Good-by. I don’t know why you’re acting so serious. I’ve only known you an hour and a half. You look as though you’d lost your last friend.”
“All I want to do now is think, so I’ll say good-by.”
“Good-by.”
He went out into the hall, full of thought. Then he turned with sudden energy and said through the door: “Will you promise to think about it, at least? I don’t see how a fine girl like you can believe that the Bible tells lies and that we come from monkeys, and that it’s all right for girls to smoke cigarettes. What becomes of the world if we let all those ideas into it? What good is living in the world if we become like the foolish city people that believe things like that? Why . . . why you’d just be an ordinary person if you had ideas like that!”
“I’ll think about it,” said Jessie, wearily and a little bitterly, as she went back to the task of straightening the room. When that was done she went up to her room and sat down. She laid her arms firmly along the arms of the chair and stared at the wall in front of her. From time to time she muttered, “He’s crazy.” Then realizing that there was no sleep for her, she changed her shoes and walked around the lake.
Brush returned to the tent “Felix” and went to bed. He had hardly fallen asleep, however, when he became aware of a great tumult. He awoke with a start. Dick Roberts was thrashing about on his cot. In a choked voice that increased every moment in volume he was crying out: “I can’t . . . I can’t . . .” In the vague light that entered the tent from the moonlight outside, Brush could see the other occupants who had raised themselves on their elbows and were angrily turned towards Roberts’ cot. “What the hell’s going on here?” they were saying. “Who’s throwing a fit, for God’s sake?” Dick Roberts’ son was wailing, “Papa, papa . . .”
Brush jumped out of bed and, seizing Roberts’ hand, began to pump it up and down. “Hey, Roberts! Hey, Dick Roberts!” he called, adding to the others: “It’s nothing, fellas. Just a nightmare. It’s all right. . . . Hey, Roberts, y’all right?”
Roberts sat up and wiped his forehead. Then somberly and in silence he leaned over and began putting on his shoes. Brush hastily put on his shoes and trousers.
“Golly! what a row!” grumbled one of their tentmates.
“Sorry,” said Roberts, and picking up his bathrobe started to leave the tent.
“Papa, where y’ goin’?” asked his son, in terror.
“’Sh! Go to sleep, George.”
“Papa! I wanta come.”
“No, no. You go back to sleep.”
Brush picked up a blanket and followed Roberts out of the tent. He caught up with him in the dusty road that led through the camp. Roberts was standing with lowered eyes in the moonlight; he was perfectly still and seemed to be thinking of something remote and profound. Brush stood and waited.
“You go on back,” said Roberts, in a whisper, still without raising his eyes. “I’ll find somewhere to sleep down by the shore here.”
“Don’t you think you’d better get your pants on? We’ll go for a walk.”
“I wouldn’t go back to that tent for a million dollars.”
“It doesn’t hurt what those fellas say. What does it matter what people say?”
“I want to be alone,” said Roberts, turning abruptly. He continued down the hill. Arriving at the water’s edge, he took a paddle off the rack and pushed a canoe into the water. Brush did the same. Roberts whispered, savagely: “Beat it! Get out of here! I want to be alone, I said!”
“I must go wherever you go,” said Brush.
Roberts started to direct his canoe toward the center of the lake. He beat the water first on one side, then on the other. The canoe wheeled in circles. Roberts became distraught with rage and began shoveling the lake furiously. Brush’s canoe glided out like a seal. He pointed it in another direction, tactfully as though he had come out for a meditative hour in the moonlight. Roberts lost his paddle. Brush drew near. “I’ll get it for you,” he said.
“No! No! Get out!” cried Roberts in hoarse whispers. “What the hell is this, anyway? I’m not crazy yet. I don’t need a guard to follow me around. I’m not crazy.”
“Mr. Roberts, I’ll be quiet. I won’t trouble you. I just want to make sure you’re all right.”
Roberts stared at him a moment, then began plowing the lake again. His canoe turned over and in a moment he was noisily swimming towards shore.
“This is getting complicated,” muttered Brush, shepherding canoe, paddle and swimmer. When he reached land, Roberts was trying to dry his pajamas by shaking himself and by wringing out the folds. Brush replaced the canoes and the paddles. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ll get you a towel.” The bathhouse was locked, but Brush vaulted the board fence. He found some sour and blackened towels on the floor and threw them over the partition. When he vaulted back he found an old and nervous night watchman waiting for him with a flashlight.
“That’s all right, boys,” mumbled the watchman. “Have your fun, only don’t make any noise.”
“Borrow his flashlight,” said Brush, “and go back to the tent and get your clothes on.”
Roberts seized the flashlight, but before he started off he breathed, hoarsely, at Brush: “Go away! Get out! I want to be alone, I tell you!”
“I can’t. I promised I’d follow you everywhere.”
The night watchman shuffled along behind them: “Have all the good times you want, boys, only quiet,” he said.
When Roberts emerged from the tent he was dressed. He held his automobile key in one hand and, running and stumbling, he started for the large field where scores of automobiles were drawn up in ranks. Brush ran along beside him. “If you don’t take me along,” he said, breathlessly, “I’ll have to get some other people to help me.”
Roberts was trembling so he could scarcely fit the key into the lock. Brush jumped upon the running-board, pleading with him. The motor started and Roberts savagely turned the handle that closed the window where Brush’s hand was resting. Brush ran to the First Aid house and burst in upon the doctor. “Doc,” he cried, “lend me your car, quick! There’s a man here who I think may be trying to commit suicide.”
“What? Wait a minute. I must get someone to take my place.”
“I can’t wait. I may lose him. Give me your car key.”
They hurried out together. “What’s the matter with him?” asked the doctor.
“He’s . . . well, he’s just not happy,” explained Brush.
Roberts had taken some time in extricating his car from the ranks, and Brush started out eagerly after the dim red tail-light speeding through the lanes of the forest. Morgan’s Wood was a vast checkerboard of roads. Rustic benches and tables had been set at intervals among the scrawny trees, and occasionally cement fireplaces had been built. Towers of scaffolding, roughened with carved initials of thousands of visitors, rose above the tree-tops, furnishing lookouts for sight-seers and fire wardens. Occasionally a boarded-up refreshment stand stood beside the road, like a vast piano-box in the moonlight. As Brush overtook Roberts, the latter gave him a glance and stepped on the accelerator. They drove abreast for a time, shouting at one another, their cars lurching from side to side. They suddenly emerged into the main street of Morganville. Roberts was in need of gas and drove up to the still-lighted garage. Brush, avoiding Roberts’ sudden turn, swerved to one side and struck a hitching-post in front of the Depot Hotel. There was a terrific din of shaken metal and shattered glass, and in the silence that followed it one wheel slowly and drunkenly crossed the street, looked about for a bed, and lay down.
Some white-clad figures appeared on the second-story porch of the hotel. Judge Corey’s voice called out, “Who’s dying down there, folks?”
“Judge, this is George Brush. Can I see you a minute?”
“Are you all right, boy?”
“Yes.”
“Side door’s open, Jim. Come up and have a drink.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Come up, anyway, Jim. It’s a great big free country.”
Brush dashed up the stairs and burst into the room. “Judge,” he said, breathlessly. “I want you to lend me your car . . .”
“Jim boy, you just had one.”
“I know, but we gotta save a man from killing himself.”
“Where is he?” asked the Judge, looking alertly into the hall. “Say, buddy, we can’t have any of that around Camp Morgan. What’s the matter with him, anyway?”
“I don’t know, Judge. He’s just not . . . happy.”
“Not happy? Is he nuts?”
“No . . . it’s . . . it’s business, partly. It’s the depression.”
“Jim,” said the Judge, angrily, “now don’t you go mentioning the depression. That’s what causes all this. Don’t you say that word again. Where is the fella?”
“He’s getting gas at the station next door.”
“All right.” The Judge turned and clapped his hands. “Folks, we’re going for a ride in the woods. Say, Bush, Bough, Beach—By the way, what’s your name, Jim?”
“Brush, George Brush.”
“Brush, I want you meet these princes. This is Helma Solario, the best little trouper you could hope to know. Jeannie Socket, Bill Watkins, Mike Kusack. Girls, fellas, shake hands with Bush, friend of my daughter. By the way, Jim, you made a big impression.
“We must hurry, Judge. Really.”
“My husband runs that garage,” said Helma Solario, a plump black-eyed little woman, in an advanced stage of negligé and intoxication. “Mike, run down and tell him not to give the guy any gas.” She went out on the porch and gave further instructions from there. “Bring the dope in here. We’ll give him something to live for. Does he play poker? Ask him?”
“Come on, girls, we’d better go after him ourselves,” cried the judge.
Brush descended the stairs, four at a time, and caught sight of Roberts driving off. The poker party followed in high spirits. They all climbed into the judge’s car. Helma Solario sat on Brush’s lap.
“This baby’s alive, anyway,” said Helma, tickling his ear. “Where do you come from, sweetness?”
“Michigan,” replied Brush, peering anxiously into the forest at the right and the left of the road.
“All right, Michigan, when you find this guy tell him life’s a big thrill. See? Tell him to stick around; we’re going to have some more world wars. He’ll love it. Tell him from me the depression’s only begun. Next year’s going to make this year look sky-high.”
“You pay a fine for that,” said the judge.
“Has he a family and kids?”
“Yes,” said Brush.
“Sure he oughta wait around awhile until his kids grow up and call him an old boob. Why, he doesn’t know the half of it yet. Old age is great, too, tell him.”
“Now that’s enough, Helma,” said the judge.
“All right, tell him about the family life and old age of Judge Leonidas Corey. No one can ever say you aren’t happy, can they, Leon? Just one damned million after another.”
Brush saw Roberts’ car drawn up in the undergrowth. “Stop the car, Judge. I’ve found him. Listen. I can do this alone from now on. Thanks a lot for bringing me here. I won’t need you now.”
“I want to talk to the fellow,” said the judge.
“That’d be the last straw,” said Helma. “God! Leave it to Michigan here. Good-by, baby. Tell him life’s a big thrill.”
The party drove off, leaving Brush still carrying his blanket, to peer about the woods for his friend. The car was empty. The surroundings lay in deep shadow. Brush listened carefully and heard nothing. Finally raising his eyes, he saw Roberts standing on the highest platform of one of the watchtowers. He went over to the foot of the tower and stood looking up.
“Damn it,” said Roberts, “there you are again! Go away! Go on home!”
Brush did not answer. He waited for half an hour. Finally Roberts laboriously and awkwardly climbed down the ladder.
“It’s getting chilly,” muttered Brush. “You might want this blanket.”
Roberts stared at him a moment, then started towards his car.
“I’m not going to let you get in the car,” said Brush. “I’m stronger than you are.”
Roberts began walking through the bushes, with Brush six feet behind him. This journey went on for over an hour. At times they found themselves at the lake’s edge. Once they suddenly entered Morganville, where Roberts sat down for ten minutes on someone’s front steps while Brush stood out in the middle of the street, tactfully gazing into the distance. Then plunging back into the forest again, they roamed through the clearings. Coming upon one of the picnic havens, Brush cleared his throat and said:
“Why don’t you lie down here and get some sleep?”
“I tell you I never do sleep. How do I know I’ll ever be able to sleep again?”
“It’s two o’clock. I think you’ll be able to sleep. I’ll build a fire.”
Roberts turned and again began stumbling through the trees. Brush caught up with him and seized his arm firmly. “You’re not going any farther,” he said, in a loud voice. “And you’re not going to think any more about these things. I know what you’re thinking all the time, and you’ve got to stop it. The world isn’t as bad as you think it is . . . even if it looks bad. Now you lie down on that bench or table, wherever you like. I’m going to make a fire and sit here till morning. If you can’t sleep, never mind; just look up through the trees. I shouldn’t have let you tramp around with your head full of thoughts like that.”
He laid the blanket on one of the benches. Roberts stretched himself on it and turned his contorted face away. After collecting several piles of dry sticks, Brush laid a fire according to the rules that had once gained him a badge in Ludington, Michigan. He sat down and looked into it. He asked, in a low voice: “Can I sing? Do you mind if I sing?” There was no answer. He began to sing softly. He tried “Far above Cayuga’s Waters” and “The wings of a dove.” He sang “Lie down, little croppies, lie down,” and “Cowboy, go back to the hills.” From there he went on to almost everything he knew. Finally he must have nodded, for he awoke with a start to find that day was breaking. The birds were beginning to make interrogative noises in the trees. He saw with surprise that an apparently cloudless sky could suddenly reveal itself as covered with soft pink clouds. As Roberts was snoring, Brush nodded off again. When he awoke, Roberts was looking at him. Without saying a word, Roberts picked up the blanket and started off. He was pale and embarrassed. They returned to the camp in silence and went to bed in the tent “Felix.”
Brush was a little late for breakfast at table M. He found Judge Corey alone.
“Jim, how did it go?” asked the judge.
“He’ll be all right today, Judge.”
“You’re a prince, Jim. We couldn’t have a thing like that happen at Camp Morgan. The doctor came and told me about it. Don’t you worry about the car.”
Jessie Mayhew stood by Brush. “How do you like your eggs?” she asked.
“Jessie,” said the judge, “you give the fella the best of everything the camp’s got. Nothing’s too good for Jim. . . . My wife and daughter tell me you have a fine voice, too. Jim, young fella, lean your ear over here. I want to ask you something: When are you leaving camp?”
“Sometime this morning.”
The judge paused, then began in a cordial and confidential tone: “Jim, young fella, you made a big hit with my daughter, a big hit. I know that little girl and it’s not every man that interests her, no, sir. Now listen. I want to give you a little tip. Just between you and I, see? . . . just man to man. That girl ought to have a nice home of her own. See what I mean? You might say she ain’t really happy up at our house. Jim, thirty-five thousand dollars goes with that girl. Yes, sir, if she can find a good home, thirty-five thousand dollars goes with her. Depression year, too. Think it over. Yes, and what’s more, I’m in a position to settle a young man in some good job around the Capitol, too. Well, that’s just between you and I . . . How does it appeal to you, eh?”
Brush turned scarlet. Jessie Mayhew had been placing his cereal and coffee before him. He glanced at her face. “I . . . I hope she finds a good home, Judge,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah. Well, think it over, boy, and in the meantime I’ll see your school books get a high place. Yes, sir.”