I walked down the lane as far as the Horse Monument, went back into the pine woods for a minute, near our houses, thinking about Gay, and then about Gwendolyn, and wondered what she would think if she knew I played house in the woods with my sister, like a little sissy. When I got to the hotel I went first out on to the stone wharf, and watched a tug towing a barge across the bay. Some of the maids from the hotel were in bathing suits, sitting on the stone edge of the wharf, and when they saw me they began laughing. I walked back to the hotel and went along the edge of the golf course, toward the Point Road. There was nobody playing golf, it was too early. Too hot. The sheep were all lying under a tree chewing their cuds. I threw acorns at them and made them get up, and then I was ashamed and went up between the houses and through the small oak woods to the Company Camp. The Peters were there, and Sanford, and Warren, and Frank Tupper, but not Gwendolyn. They were lying in the grass. What were we going to do. Should we go and play in the hayloft, dive down through the chute, slide down the rope.
— Andy’s got a sweetheart.
— Where’s Gwendolyn, Andy?
— Shut up.
Frank Tupper looked at me and then got up and walked to the Company hut. He went in, and in a minute came out again holding up a baseball bat.
— Scrub one, he said.
— Scrub two.
— Three.
— Four.
— Five.
We played baseball till Gwendolyn came, and then we took turns standing under the overflow of the windmill and letting the water splash on our heads. I turned my face up, and let the water spout out of my mouth.
— He thinks he’s smart.
— Rats live on no evil star.
— What do you mean by that?
— Just what I say. Rats live on no evil star.
Frank Tupper spat in his baseball glove.
— That’s an old one. A palindrome.
— A what?
— It spells the same thing backward.
Susan came running across the field and fell down and began to cry. I walked home with her, and we sat on Plymouth Rock Junior under the cherry tree, and she said that Mother and Aunt Norah were quarreling upstairs in Aunt Norah’s room, and Uncle Tom and Uncle David had gone off for a walk not saying a word, and Porper was all alone with the maids, sitting in the soapbox sailboat — and Molly with an earache—
— lying awake, too, with the wind singing through the wire screens, and the soft muslin curtains sucking and fluttering against the screens, and the sea-moon shining through them on to the floor and across the foot of my bed, and the crickets chirping like mad, the mosquitoes, too, humming so loudly outside the window that they sounded as if they were in the room. What was that they had said at supper. When Aunt Norah was pouring the cocoa out of the jug. It should have been here this evening. Who was it that got the mail. It was Smiley that brought it. Why didn’t Andy go. Well, anyway it didn’t come. Mother was humming as she buttered more bread for Porper; Uncle Tom tapped with his fingers on the bare edge of the table as if he were playing a tune on a piano. What letter was it that hadn’t come. Was it from Father. Were they expecting Father. What fun that would be. He would get out the cameras, and he would teach me how to pitch an out-drop. And now the two sets of voices downstairs — Molly and Margaret, at the back of the house, murmuring and giggling secretly, slyly, insinuatingly, and the others on the front porch, a little farther off, more intermittent, now and then more loudly, and Uncle David’s deep laugh which always sounded a little angry. Andy’s got a sweetheart. What did they mean by that. Had Gwendolyn told everybody about it, or was it perhaps Frank who had first found the box of candy. Perhaps he had found it and had never given it to Gwendolyn. Shame on Andy, shame on Andy. Let them say it. I would row right round Clark’s Island, taking all day if necessary, and find my way at low tide through the channels, counting the seals on the mud flats. I would row to Plymouth. I would borrow Mr. Dearing’s knockabout and sail right out past Plymouth Beach into Massachusetts Bay, and watch the Plymouth steamer going past on its way to Boston. I would swim across from the Point to the Long Beach. I would dive off the pier of the draw on the long bridge, twenty-feet down into the swift current of the tide. I would strike out Frank Tupper every time he came to bat. And I wouldn’t say a word to Gwen-dolyn, not another word all summer.
They were beginning to sing. It was always Uncle David who started them on that, he had a swelled head about his voice, and always sang when he was hoeing the tennis-court with us. Oh, you beautiful doll, you great big beautiful doll.
Margaret was talking to a man under my back window.
— Quit it.
— I will not.
— I said quit it, will you?
I got quickly out of bed and went to the window to see what they were doing, but I was too late, they had gone round the corner of the house into the shadow, to get out of the moonlight. I waited, listening, but they didn’t come back. He must have been kissing her. I would keep awake until they came to bed. Watch them through the hole by the washstand. It would be dark on my side of the wall, I would stand very still in bare feet, get back into bed without a sound, they would never suspect that I was watching them. Should I go to bed now or stay up. Better stay up, and watch the flies in the flytrap with the electric flashlight. I got the flashlight and looked at the flies. They were all asleep, standing upside down under the roof of screen wire, their white bellies turned towards the light. I ought to let them go, Uncle David was beginning to suspect why I kept them. Perhaps I had better give him one of my arrowheads. What mischief have you fellows been up to. Uncle David, I thought you might like to have one of my arrowheads, it’s a quartz one.
I went to the side window, beside the tennis court, to hear them singing. They were singing the song that Uncle David had made up. When I slap on the kalsomine I think about those gals o’ mine way down in old Kentucky where the moon is shining bright. When I slap on the Reckitts blue I think about the thickets through the mountains of Virginia where I walked with them at night. Walls and ceilings have their feelings the same as you and me. I’m only a paper hanger, but my heart is pure as mud. When they had finished it, they all laughed in the silly way they always did, the laughter rising and falling, mixing and unmixing, but I could make out Mother’s and Uncle David’s, particularly at the end, when Mother’s went up and Uncle David’s went down. The twits. The nitwits. But what about the letter, and why, come to think of it, hadn’t I been sent for the evening mail, as usual. Instead, I had been sent to the playhouse with Porper, and when I brought him back, I had to sail him in the soapbox sailboat.
Footsteps were coming up the stairs, candlelight wavered on the rough, pine beams of the unfinished roof; it was Molly and Margaret coming up to bed, and I tiptoed with cold, naked feet on the bare floor and stood by the washstand, hardly breathing, and waited.
— the dust, too, as the stage coach rattled past me and turned up King Caesar’s Road, to go to Powder Point Hall, skewing a little, the rear wheels slewing in the sandy ruts as Smiley touched up the old horses, the whole thing like Buffalo Bill. I looked through the packet of letters again, to make sure that there was none from Father. Harvard University. Jordan Marsh. Acme Cleaning Company. A small blue envelope, addressed in small handwriting, to Mother. Another, in the same handwriting, to Aunt Norah. Both postmarked Plymouth. Nothing that looked as if it might be from Father. By this time the train would be at Kingston. Or maybe at the Cordage. The people in the train would see the back of the Standish Monument, which I had seen only once, when we went to Plymouth to see the Plymouth Rock. We had lunch at that old house with four English elms in front of it, which Captain Something-or-Other had brought back from England in 1750.