He slept.
He awoke with a high hot sun beating in on his face through the porch awnings.
He hated to awake in sunlight.
Some day he would sleep in a great room that was always cool and dark.
There would be trees and vines at his windows, or the scooped-out lift of the hill.
His clothing was wet with night-damp as he dressed.
When he went downstairs he found Gant rocking miserably upon the porch, his hand gripped over a walkingstick.
“Good-morning,” he said, “how do you feel?”
His father cast his uneasy flickering eyes on him, and groaned.
“Merciful God!
I’m being punished for my sins.”
“You’ll feel better in a little,” said Eugene.
“Did you eat anything?”
“It stuck in my throat,” said Gant, who had eaten heartily.
“I couldn’t swallow a bite.
How’s your hand, son?” he asked very humbly.
“Oh, it’s all right,” said Eugene quickly.
“Who told you about my hand?”
“She said I had hurt your hand,” said Gant sorrowfully.
“Ah-h!” said the boy angrily.
“No.
I wasn’t hurt.”
Gant leaned to the side and, without looking, clumsily, patted his son’s uninjured hand.
“I’m sorry for what I’ve done,” he said.
“I’m a sick man.
Do you need money?”
“No,” said Eugene, embarrassed.
“I have all I need.”
“Come to the office today, and I’ll give you something,” said Gant.
“Poor child, I suppose you’re hard up.”
But instead, he waited until Laura James returned from her morning visit to the city’s bathing-pool.
She came with her bathing-suit in one hand, and several small packages in the other.
More arrived by negro carriers.
She paid and signed,
“You must have a lot of money, Laura?” he said.
“You do this every day, don’t you?”
“Daddy gets after me about it,” she admitted, “but I love to buy clothes.
I spend all my money on clothes.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Nothing — whatever you like.
It’s a lovely day to do something, isn’t it?”
“It’s a lovely day to do nothing.
Would you like to go off somewhere, Laura?”
“I’d love to go off somewhere with you,” said Laura James.
“That is the idea, my girl.
That is the idea,” he said exultantly, in throaty and exuberant burlesque.
“We will go off somewhere alone — we will take along something to eat,” he said lusciously.
Laura went to her room and put on a pair of sturdy little slippers.
Eugene went into the kitchen.
“Have you a shoe-box?” he asked Eliza.