have put bread in my mouth, and kept the wolf from my door. By God, I hate you, for you stink a mile off. You low degenerates, you accursed reprobates; you would steal the pennies from a dead man’s eyes, as you have from mine, fearful, awful, and bloodthirsty mountain grills that you are!”
He would tear back into the shop muttering, to return almost at once, with a strained pretense at calmness, which ended in a howl:
“Now I want to tell you: I give you fair warning once and for all. If I find you on my steps again, I’ll put you all in jail.”
They would disperse sheepishly to their wagons, flicking their whips aimlessly along the pavements.
“By God, somethin’s sure upset the ole man.”
An hour later, like heavy buzzing flies, they would drift back settling from nowhere on the broad steps.
As he emerged from the shop into the Square, they would greet him cheerfully, with a certain affection.
“’Day, Mr. Gant.”
“Good day, boys,” he would answer kindly, absently. And he would be away with his gaunt devouring strides.
As Eugene entered, if Gant were busy on a stone, he would say gruffly, “Hello, son,” and continue with his work, until he had polished the surface of the marble with pumice and water. Then he would take off his apron, put on his coat, and say, to the dawdling, expectant boy: “Come on. I guess you’re thirsty.”
And they would go across the Square to the cool depth of the drugstore, stand before the onyx splendor of the fountain, under the revolving wooden fans, and drink chill gaseous beverages, limeade so cold it made the head ache, or foaming ice-cream soda, which returned in sharp delicious belches down his tender nostrils.
Eugene, richer by twenty-five cents, would leave Gant then, and spend the remainder of the day in the library on the Square. He read now rapidly and easily; he read romantic and adventurous novels, with a tearing hunger. At home he devoured Luke’s piled shelves of five-cent novels: he was deep in the weekly adventures of Young Wild West, fantasied in bed at night of virtuous and heroic relations with the beautiful Arietta, followed
