Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/169



"So I sent the money regular every quarter," he muttered, as if continuing some tale, "and I'd go to see him sometimes all dressed up, and I tried to talk like he did. He thought I was traveling and didn't want to be bothered. But I couldn't see him much—was I going to drag him down, just as I'd got him started right? Not much. 'Go and visit your friends, o' course,' I used to tell him, 'and you can write to me.' The best schools I picked out, the very best. And they came high. But I was good for it."

He shifted in his chair and rubbed his eyes.

"I had a hunch when I bought the ticket," he muttered. "It just come over me—'you ought not to go to a place you got the idea of from Jim,' something seemed to say to me, 'it's unlucky.' And everything so still, and the stuff so easy—'twas like finding it in the road. And the last time, too—the last time."

"But Jim—he thought—" Lindsay prompted. A dreadful curiosity held him.

"So then he wrote, 'of course it's Yale, dad,' he wrote, 'we're all going up together. You don't mind if it costs a little to get settled, do