In the road outside a man driving a horse stopped and Sam
could hear the scraping of the wheels against the buggy body as the man
turned in the narrow street. Above the scraping of the wheels rose a
voice, swearing profanely. The wind continued to blow and it had begun to
rain.
"He has got into the wrong street," thought the boy stupidly.
Windy, his head upon his hands, wept like a brokenhearted boy, his sobs
echoing through the house, his breath heavy with liquor tainting the air
of the room. In a corner by the stove the mother's ironing board stood
against the wall and the sight of it added fuel to the anger smouldering
in Sam's heart. He remembered the day when he had stood in the store
doorway with his mother and had seen the dismal and amusing failure of his
father with the bugle, and of the months before Kate's wedding, when Windy
had gone blustering about town threatening to kill her lover and the
mother and boy had stayed with the girl, out of sight in the house, sick
with humiliation.
The drunken man, laying his head upon the table, fell asleep, his snores
replacing the sobs that had stirred the boy's anger. Sam began thinking
again of his mother's life.
The effort he had made to repay her for the hardness of her life now
seemed utterly fruitless.
Pages:
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128