Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/236

 "He acts afraid of skirts," Henry had said to Tommy on one occasion.

"He?" Tommy was scornful. "He ain't afraid of anything!"

Henry knew it. "Maybe it's because you can't do much with women on fifteen a week."

"Well, I guess that's so," said Tommy, who made twenty and who had a hopeless passion.

His hopeless passion was Jane. Jane lived with her mother in a small rose-bowered bungalow at the edge of the town. She and her mother owned the bungalow, which was fortunate; they hadn't a penny for rent. Jane's father had died of a weak lung and the failure of his oil well. He had left the two women without an income. Jane's mother was delicate and Jane couldn't leave her to go out to work. So Jane dug in the little garden, and they lived largely on vegetables. She sewed for the neighbors, and bought medicine and now and then a bit of meat. She was young and strong and she had wonderful red hair. Tommy thought it was the most beautiful hair in the world. Jane was for him a sort of goddess woman. She was, he felt, infinitely above him. She knew a great deal that he didn't, about books and things—like O-liver. She sewed for his mother, and that was the way he had met her. He would go over and sit on her front steps and talk. He felt that she treated him 230