He thought of the sweet-faced nurse
who had walked with him that other time in the corridor of the hospital
and who had wept because of his fears, and then of the night when he had
felt the throat of his father between his fingers in the squalid little
kitchen. He ran his hands along the ground. "Good old ground," he said. A
sentence came into his mind followed by the figure of John Telfer
striding, stick in hand, along a dusty road. "Here is spring come and time
to plant out flowers in the grass," he said aloud. His face felt swollen
and sore from the fall in the freight car and he lay down on the ground
under a tree and slept.
When he woke it was morning and grey clouds were drifting across the sky.
Within sight, down a road, a trolley car went past into the city. Before
him, in the midst of the marsh, lay a low lake, and a raised walk, with
boats tied to the posts on which it stood, ran down to the water. He went
down the walk, bathed his bruised face in the water, and boarding a car
went back into the city.
In the morning air a new thought took possession of him. The wind ran
along a dusty road beside the car track, picking up little handfuls of
dust and playfully throwing them about.
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