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I t seemed like all the years were coming to an end
when the knock rattled the screen door.
Yesterday, a small girl's piping chatter. Today,
smooth and quiet and nearly a woman's. Yesterday,
the loving sprite skimming the walk beneath the
maples, catching for one breathless moment a thread-
darkness at the boy he could not quite see. "You
must be come in." .
The first boy, he thought. The first date. The drift
ing away from female chums and Saturday's giggling
matinees, and pajama parties and blue jeans to go
forth most regally with the first flower, nervous and
at a sparrow and see an eagle? He turned away, won
dering and disappointed. ,
"So you're Tommy Glass," he said.
"Yes, sir," Tommy croaked and offered his hand.
David pretended not to see it and hastily pointed
to a chair.
"Shirley isn't ready yet."
The boy perched nervously on the seat and David
leaned forward and stared at the rug.
Olivia came in then, wiping her hands on her
apron. "Hello, Tommy. Glad to see you again. Shirley
will be down shortly."
"You've met before?" David looked up.
"Parent's day at school. The one you missed."
Olivia was always chiding him about civic duty
when those affairs came up. It seemed the paper
manufacturing business should be interrupted to go
hear students sing and recite.
Olivia went back to the kitchen, and David heard
the cracking of an ice tray. He drummed his fingers
while Tommy stared at the floor.
"How old are you?"
pS0TF0ViLY WGOT SCCDtPO
NEW IBPffiI&BMtaE CAPRI MARK III
"Seventeen 17 next month, I mean."
"What does your father do?"
"He's a bartender."
"Oh?"
"Yes, sir. Down at the Fireplace."
It seemed to end there again. Talk coming fitfully,
dying, leaving David to study objects in the room as
if they were brand new.
A bartender what kind of background could the
boy have had? He thumped his fist into his palm
again. No, most bartenders were a sober lot and noth
ing more than businessmen. But there was some
thing about the boy the way he wouldn't look
line of sun to turn her fingers golden. Now, tall, full
of grace, and nearly ripe like Summer fruit.
David Forrester stirred in his chair when the knock
came again. He stood up and walked slowly to the
door, thinking how it was; dream happily in the
"beginning, watch a child grow, and delight in it; then
the time of the first step is past, and the first word
becomes an uncertain memory; the first thrill of
school becomes routine and the first boy touches your
door as he does now; then you suddenly regret the
time that is gone.
He opened the screen door and peered into the
breathless, as if to a coronation, in a boy's first car.
David Forrester led the way into the living room,'
and Olivia called from the kitchen: "Who is it, dear?"
David turned and faced him, and went cold inside.
He had heard, for a week, glowing terms that called
forth a ruddy, sharp-eyed young animal, dressed
like a magazine ad and gifted with the tongue of a
Wolfe or a Faulkner not a pale, bad-skinned boy
whose eyes seemed pinkishly dry, dressed in a blue
suit too small and too sharply pressed; who stood
with his mouth open, seemingly on the verge of a
stuttered greeting.
What was it in a young girl's eyes that could look
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18 Family Weekly. July J.I. 193
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