Note 55 — Chapter Thirty-five
Reading edition
I shall never forget that rather murky November evening, when I was out in what I always called Winslow’s garden, wrapping a hydrangea-bush in straw, when, lo and behold, who should turn the corner of the porch, but Henry. A most unusual thing for him to show up at the farm.
“Bek,” he said to me, without an ado or introduction, “Dave’s made up his mind to go to Springfield and take that job polishing spittoons and the handles of the big front-door for a wholesale grocery-firm.”
It wasn’t anything to take on over, and yet I can never forget the curious feeling that shot through me. Like dropping suddenly in one of those thirty-story elevators I never can get used to.
“What on earth,” I cried, “made him decide that? Couldn’t he do that good here in Centralia?”
“That’s just the fine part of it, Bek. The kid wants to go to Springfield because there’s what they call an Extension Law Course he can attend evenings. Beat that?”
Maybe you could have beaten it, but to Henry and me, standing there grinning, in the cold, gray twilight, it didn’t seem beatable. It lifted Dave’s going, for us, out of the dreariness we associated with his job as grocer’s handy-boy.
“Know what I think, Bek?” Henry went on to me. “He’s sweet on some girl. Wonder could it still be the Tarkington girl?”
“I wonder,” I said, smiling a smile that, as it stretched across my face, made me feel as if I looked exactly like an old gray tabby we had, called Sly.