I laid out two suits of underwear, with socks, shirts, collars and ties, and packed my trunk.
I put in everything except my new suit and an old one and two pairs of shoes and two hats, and my books.
I carried the books into the sitting-room and stacked them on the table, the ones I had brought from home and the ones Father said it used to be a gentleman was known by his books; nowadays he is known by the ones he has not returned and locked the trunk and addressed it.
The quarter hour sounded.
I stopped and listened to it until the chimes ceased.
I bathed and shaved.
The water made my finger smart a little, so I painted it again.
I put on my new suit and put my watch on and packed the other suit and the accessories and my razor and brushes in my hand bag, and folded the trunk key into a sheet of paper and put it in an envelope and addressed it to Father, and wrote the two notes and sealed them.
The shadow hadn't quite cleared the stoop.
I stopped inside the door, watching the shadow move.
It moved almost perceptibly, creeping back inside the door, driving the shadow back into the door.
Only she was running already when I heard it.
In the mirror she was running before I knew what it was.
That quick her train caught up over her arm she ran out of the mirror like a cloud, her veil swirling in long glints her heels brittle and fast clutch ing her dress onto her shoulder with the other hand, run ning out of the mirror the smells roses roses the voice that breathed o'er Eden.
Then she was across the porch I couldn't hear her heels then in the moonlight like a cloud, the floating shadow of the veil running across the grass, into the bellowing.
She ran out of her dress, clutching her bridal, running into the bellowing where T. P. in the dew Whooey Sassprilluh Benjy under the box bellowing.
Father had a V-shaped silver cuirass on his running chest
Shreve said, "Well, you didn't…. Is it a wedding or a wake?"
"I couldn't make it," I said.
"Not with all that primping.
What's the matter?
You think this was Sunday?"
"I reckon the police wont get me for wearing my new suit one time," I said.
"I was thinking about the Square students.
They'll think you go to Harvard. Have you got too proud to at tend classes too?"
"I'm going to eat first."
The shadow on the stoop was gone.
I stepped into sunlight, finding my shadow again.
I walked down the steps just ahead of it.
The half hour went.
Then the chimes ceased and died away.
Deacon wasn't at the postoffice either.
I stamped the two envelopes and mailed the one to Father and put Shreve's in my inside pocket, and then I remembered where I had last seen the Deacon.
It was on Decoration Day, in a G.A.R. uniform, in the middle of the parade.
If you waited long enough on any corner you would see him in whatever parade came along.
The one before was on Columbus' or Garibaldi's or somebody's birthday.
He was in the Street Sweepers' section, in a stovepipe hat, carrying a two inch Italian flag, smoking a cigar among the brooms and scoops.
But the last time was the G.A.R. one, because Shreve said:
"There now.
Just look at what your grandpa did to that poor old nigger."
"Yes," I said. "Now he can spend day after day marching in parades.
If it hadn't been for my grandfather, he'd have to work like whitefolks."
I didn't see him anywhere.
But I never knew even a working nigger that you could find when you wanted him, let alone one that lived off the fat of the land.
A car came along.
I went over to town and went to Parker's and had a good breakfast.
While I was eating I heard a clock strike the hour.
But then I suppose it takes at least one hour to lose time in, who has been longer than history getting into the mechanical progression of it.
When I finished breakfast I bought a cigar.
The girl said a fifty cent one was the best, so I took one and lit it and went out to the street.