I’ll help you if I can.”
“When are you going to let Hard Boy take you to Exeter?” said Tom Grant, winking at Jim Trivett.
Eugene flushed, making a defensive answer.
“I’m ready to go any time he is,” he said uneasily.
“Look here, Legs!” said Jim Trivett, grinning loosely.
“Do you really want to go with me or are you just bluffing?”
“I’ll go with you!
I’ve told you I’d go with you!” Eugene said angrily.
He trembled a little.
Tom Grant grinned slyly at Jim Trivett.
“It’ll make a man of you, ‘Gene,” he said.
“Boy, it’ll sure put hair on your chest.”
He laughed, not loudly, but uncontrollably, shaking his head as at some secret thought.
Jim Trivett’s loose smile widened.
He spat into the wood-box.
“Gawd!” he said.
“They’ll think Spring is here when they see old Legs.
They’ll need a stepladder to git at him.”
Tom Grant was shaken with hard fat laughter.
“They sure God will!” he said.
“Well, what about it, ‘Gene?” Jim Trivett demanded suddenly.
“Is it a go?
Saturday?”
“Suits me!” said Eugene.
When he had gone, they grinned thirstily at each other for a moment, the pleased corrupters of chastity.
“Pshaw!” said Tom Grant.
“You oughtn’t to do that, Hard Boy.
You’re leading the boy astray.”
“It’s not going to hurt him,” said Jim Trivett.
“It’ll be good for him.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, grinning.
“Wait a minute!” whispered Jim Trivett.
“I think this is the place.”
They had turned away from the centre of the dreary tobacco town.
For a quarter of an hour they had walked briskly through drab autumnal streets, descending finally a long rutted hill that led them, past a thinning squalor of cheap houses, almost to the outskirts.
It was three weeks before Christmas: the foggy air was full of chill menace.
There was a brooding quietness, broken by far small sounds.
They turned into a sordid little road, unpaved, littered on both sides with negro shacks and the dwellings of poor whites.
It was a world of rickets.
The road was unlighted.
Their feet stirred dryly through fallen leaves.
They paused before a two-storey frame house.
A lamp burned dimly behind lowered yellow shades, casting a murky pollen out upon the smoky air.
“Wait a minute,” said Jim Trivett, in a low voice,
“I’ll find out.”
They heard scuffling steps through the leaves.
In a moment a negro man prowled up.
“Hello, John,” said Jim Trivett, almost inaudibly.
“Evenin’, boss!” the negro answered wearily, but in the same tone.
“We’re looking for Lily Jones’ house,” said Jim Trivett.