U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [210]
The better he liked it in school the worse it was at home. Aunt Beatrice was always nag nag nag from morning til
-73-night. As if he didn't know that he and mother were eating her bread and sleeping under her roof; they paid board, didn't they? even if they didn't pay as much as Major and Mrs. Glen or Dr. Kern did, and they certainly did enough work to pay for their keep anyway. He'd heard Mrs. Glen saying when Dr. Atwood was cal ing and Aunt Beatrice was out of the room how it was a shame that poor Mrs. Savage such a sweet woman, and a good church-woman too, and the daughter of a general in the army, had to work her fingers to the bone for her sister who was only a fussy old maid and overcharged so, though of course she did keep a very charming house and set an excel ent table, not like a boarding house at al , more like a lovely refined private home, such a relief to find in Trenton, that was such a commercial city so ful of work-ing people and foreigners; too bad that the daughters of General El sworth should be reduced to taking paying guests. Dick felt Mrs. Glen might have said something about his carrying out the ashes and shovel ing snow and al that. Anyway he didn't think a highschool student ought to have to take time from his studies to do the chores.
Dr. Atwood was the rector of St. Gabriel's Episcopal Church where Dick had to sing in the choir every Sunday at two services while mother and his brother Henry S., who was three years older than he was and worked in a drafting office in Philadelphia and only came home week-ends, sat comfortably in a pew. Mother loved St. Gabriel's because it was so highchurch and they had processions and even incense. Dick hated it on account of choirpractice and having to keep his surplice clean and because he never had any pocketmoney to shoot craps with behind the bench in the vestry and he was always the one who had to stand at the door and whisper, "Cheeze it," if anybody was coming. One Sunday, right after his thirteenth birthday, he'd
-74-walked home from church with his mother and Henry feeling hungry and wondering al the way if they were going to have fried chicken for dinner. They were al three stepping up onto the stoop, Mother leaning a little on Dick's arm and the purple and green poppies on her wide hat jiggling in the October sunlight, when he saw Aunt Beatrice's thin face looking worriedly out through the glass panel of the front door.
"Leona," she said in an excited reproachful voice, "he's here." "Who, Beatrice dear?"
"You know wel enough . . . I don't know what to do . . . he says he wants to see you. I made him wait in the lower hal on account of . . . er . . . our friends."
"Oh, God, Beatrice, haven't I borne enough from that man?
Mother let herself drop onto the bench under the stags-horn coatrack in the hal . Dick and Henry stared at the white faces of the two women. Aunt Beatrice pursed up her lips and said in a spiteful tone, "You boys had better go out and walk round the block. I can't have two big hulks like you loafing round the house. You be back for Sunday dinner at one thirty sharp . . . run along now."
"Why, what's the matter with Aunt Beatrice?" asked Dick as they walked off down the street. "Got the pip I guess . . . she gives me a pain in the neck," Henry said in a superior tone.
Dick walked along kicking at the pavement with his toes.
"Say, we might go around and have a soda they
have awful good sodas at Dryer's."
"Got any dough?"
Dick shook his head.
"Wel , you needn't think I'm goin' to treat you. . . . Jimminy criskets, Trenton's a rotten town. . . . In Phila-delphia I seen a drugstore with a sodafountain half a block long."
"Aw, you."
"I bet you don't remember when we lived in Oak
-75-Park, Dick. . . . Now Chicago's a fine town." "Sure I do . . . and you an' me going to kindergarden and Dad being there and everything."
"Hel 's bel s, I wanta smoke."
"Mother'l smel it on you."
"Don't give a damn if