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Carraway's report had rather dashed him at first, for it proved that no other hands than Nita's and his own, of course had touched either envelope or contents.
"Then the way to touch the man is through the boy, I presume," he said abruptly. Arrested by the words, the lawyer looked down quickly, but the other, still kneeling upon the ground, was fingering a plant he had just picked up. "Fine leaves, eh?" was the remark that met Carraway's sudden start. "To touch him, yes," replied the lawyer thoughtfully.
Christopher's gaze returned slowly from the landscape and rested inquiringly upon the youthful features before him, seeking in them some definite promise of the future. The girlish look of the mouth irritated him ludicrously, and half-forgotten words of Carraway's awoke within his memory.
"Howdy, marsters," he muttered, in answer to the lawyer's greeting, raising a trembling hand to his wrinkled forehead. "Y'all ain' seen nuttin' er ole miss's yaller cat, Beulah, I reckon?" Peterkin, who had eyed him with the peculiar disfavour felt for the black man by the low-born white, evinced a sudden interest out of all proportion to Carraway's conception of the loss.
Then I said 'Good-night. I stopped for a moment outside the door, and heard him begin splashing and scrubbing. The thing was getting on my own nerves. I went off up on deck, and smoked hard, then I read, and wrote letters, and smoked again, and went to bed very late. I had steered clear of the bathroom and all Carraway's haunts so far as I could.
Carraway discreetly held her tongue, although she was far from approving Carraway's course in so far as it affected the children. She tacitly agreed to the proposition, but there was the light of an idea in her eye. The days intervening before Christmas passed rapidly away, and Christmas eve finally came.
The idea grew to be a mania with him, and he gradually developed into a utilitarian of the most pronounced type. Nothing in the world so suited him as an object, homely or otherwise, that could be used for something; the things that were used for nothing had no attractions for him. After this he developed further, and discovered new uses for old objects. Mrs. Carraway's parlor vases were turned into receptacles for matches, or papers, according to their size. The huge Satsuma vase became a more or less satisfactory bill-file; and the cloisonné jar, by virtue of its great durability, Mr. Carraway used as a receptacle for the family golf-balls, much to the trepidation of his good wife, who considered that the vase, like some women, had in its beauty a sufficient cause for existence, and who would have preferred going without golf forever to the destruction of her treasured bit of bric-
She availed herself of the chance, threw her head back, and shook convulsively. "She sent her a ball of shaving-paper," Mrs. Carraway said. A faint smile flitted over Carraway's face. "Well, it might have been worse," he said. "She can use it for curling-paper." He paused a moment.
But to go back to whar I started from, it all makes in the end for that pretty little chap over yonder in the dining-room. Rather puny for his years now, but as sound as a nut, and he'll grow, he'll grow. When his mother poor, worthless drab gave birth to him and died, I told her it was the best day's work she'd ever done." Carraway's humour rippled over.
"History, 'rithmatic, Latin all the languages," rolled out Fletcher in a voice that sounded like a tattoo. "I can't keep up with 'em, but they're all thar, ain't they, sonny?" "Oh, you could never say 'em off straight, grandpa," retorted the boy, with the pertness of a spoiled girl, at which, to Carraway's surprise, Fletcher fairly chuckled with delight.
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