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“Bill, I only hope that when you’re my age you have a boy who’s as great a comfort to you as you are to me.”

“Yes, Dad,” Studs said, embarrassed, touched by the gentle note which had crept into his father’s voice; and he liked his old man a lot. It made him almost wince and feel like a traitor to think that he’d lied to him about the stock, and that he hadn’t even bothered to ask his advice before buying it. And if he mentioned it now, the old man would take it pretty badly.

“Yes, Bill, I used to worry about you a lot. For a while you were a pretty wild lad, but then, I guess all young lads who are worth their salt have to sow their wild oats. I was the same myself once. But now I have the feeling I can depend on you, and I just wanted to say so,” Lonigan said, mumbling his words.

A lump gathered in Studs’ throat. He was afraid because of the strong feelings that seemed to break and well up within him. And he felt like a louse, not worthy of his father’s trust. To regain his control, he lit a cigarette, inhaled, let the smoke escape through his nose.

“And, Bill, you got to watch your health. You’ve got to fight an uphill battle to win it back, just as I got to fight an uphill battle to get back where I was before these hard times set in.” Lonigan sat up erectly. “A Lonigan can be down, but he’s never out!”

Studs nodded thoughtfully, his eyes wandering about the parlor, at the baby grand piano, the legs scratched, the cabinet radio, the mirror, the subdued gray wallpaper, the ornate floor-lamp, the family pictures hung about the wall, and then at his father, brooding and corpulent.

Lonigan arose stiffly and muttered as he walked out of the parlor, “Goodnight, son.”

“Goodnight, Dad.”

Studs moved to the window and stood gazing down, hands in pocket. Across on the other side of the street, a couple emerged from shadows, arm in arm, walking slowly, passed through an area brightened by the glow of a street lamp, passed again into the shadows that fell from the large apartment motel. The sight made him want a girl, to kiss, to love, to talk to and hold at this minute, Catherine, Lucy, a girl. An automobile passed. He glanced at the apartment hotel, its lighted windows yellow squares against an indistinct, bulky background. What were the people behind those windows doing? What troubles, worries, problems did they have bothering them? He recalled how on the night he had graduated from grammar school, he had stood by the parlor window of their Wabash Avenue building, looking out after everyone had gone to bed. Then, he’d looked forward to a lot of things. Now, Phil Rolfe’s brother-in-law, out of it, his old man almost on the spot. No, he still had things to look forward to, still was in the show. He turned from the window and picked up his newspaper to read in bed. Turning out the parlor lights, he thought, Jesus, Jesus Christ, if only his stocks would go way up!

CHAPTER FIVE

I

“Shall we go into the other room?” Loretta asked, arising.

“Nice supper, Marie,” Phil said with false joviality to the plump colored maid, who, with a surly frown on her face, had commenced removing the supper dishes.

“Phil, I’ll have to get rid of her. She’s entirely too surly for a nigger maid,” Loretta said in a low but exasperated voice as they led Studs through the French door into the parlor.

“All right, dear, as you wish, but can we get another as cheap?”

“Frances only pays hers seven dollars a week.”

Studs jammed his hands into his trouser pockets, glancing about the clean, bright parlor, his eyes resting on the blue and gray walls. Easy to look at, and a nifty, neat job of paperhanging, he thought.

“Say, I never saw a chair like this one, except in the store windows or the movies,” he said, pointing to his right at a low-lined, chromium-plated chair.

“That’s one of our recent acquisitions,” Phil said with pride.

“It’s modernistic,” Loretta said, seating herself on the divan whose maroon-red upholstering matched the wine-red cushioning of the chair.

“Sit in it, Studs,”