Page:To-morrow Morning (1927).pdf/130

 was one trousers leg always caught up? So sensitive, so dreamy. And so artistic, Kate thought, watching him trying to make scenery for the old toy theater with its "Cinderella's Kitchen" and "Ballroom in the Palace," rummaging in Kate's piece box at the top of the stairs that held patterns and rolls of tan pongee, dimity with forget-me-nots on it, and kitchen-apron gingham, covering an electric bulb with violet or green crêpe paper, giving everything up in despair, and then starting in again.

She had gone through so much with him: when he fell through the ice and nearly drowned, skating on the lake; when the boys were on the barn roof and Laddie Baylow said, "Jump, why don't you?" and Jodie jumped; when he burned his eyebrows off after he had gotten enough subscriptions to The Youth's Companion to win Fun with Chemistry. His body had grown hard from roaming in the woods, swimming, fighting, and playing with the other boys, but the inside Joe seemed more tender, more helpless, more easily hurt, than when he was a baby or little Jodie. Kate was in despair sometimes. From loud laughter, tearing spirits, his eyes would suddenly fill with tears. What was it? What had she said or done?

But one thing about him she did know, that he had no nonsense in his head about girls, never thought of them. She boasted of it to the other mothers, rather meanly sometimes.

Up in his room Joe sat reading passionate poems,