The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald Read Online Free PDF Page B

Lois was very jauntily attired in an expensively appropriate travelling affair, she did not linger to pat out the dust which covered her clothes, but started up the central walk with curious glances at either side. Her face was very eager and expectant, yet she hadn’t at all that glorified expression that girls wear when they arrive for a Senior Prom at Princeton or New Haven; still, as there were no senior proms here, perhaps it didn’t matter.
    She was wondering what he would look like, whether she’d possibly know him from his picture. In the picture, which hung over her mother’s bureau at home, he seemed very young and hollow-cheeked and rather pitiful, with only a well-developed mouth and an ill-fitting probationer’s gown to show that he had already made a momentous decision about his life. Of course he had been only nineteen then and now he was thirty-six—didn’t look like that at all; in recent snap-shots he was much broader and his hair had grown a little thin—but the impression of her brother she had always retained was that of the big picture. And so she had always been a little sorry for him. What a life for a man! Seventeen years of preparation and he wasn’t even a priest yet—wouldn’t be for another year.
    Lois had an idea that this was all going to be rather solemn if she let it be. But she was going to give her very best imitation of undiluted sunshine, the imitation she could give even when her head was splitting or when her mother had a nervous breakdown or when she was particularly romantic and curious and courageous. This brother of hers undoubtedly needed cheering up, and he was going to be cheered up, whether he liked it or not.
    As she drew near the great, homely front door she saw a man break suddenly away from a group and, pulling up the skirts of his gown, run toward her. He was smiling, she noticed, and he looked very big and— and reliable. She stopped and waited, knew that her heart was beating unusually fast.
    “Lois!” he cried, and in a second she was in his arms. She was suddenly trembling.
    “Lois!” he cried again, “why, this is wonderful! I can’t tell you, Lois, how
much
I’ve looked forward to this. Why, Lois, you’re beautiful!”
    Lois gasped.
    His voice, though restrained, was vibrant with energy and that odd sort of enveloping personality she had thought that she only of the family possessed.
    “I’m mighty glad, too—Kieth.”
    She flushed, but not unhappily, at this first use of his name.
    “Lois—Lois—Lois,” he repeated in wonder. “Child, we’ll go in here a minute, because I want you to meet the rector, and then we’ll walk around. I have a thousand things to talk to you about.”
    His voice became graver. “How’s mother?”
    She looked at him for a moment and then said something that she had not intended to say at all, the very sort of thing she had resolved to avoid.
    “Oh, Kieth—she’s—she’s getting worse all the time, every way.”
    He nodded slowly as if he understood.
    “Nervous, well—you can tell me about that later. Now——”
    She was in a small study with a large desk, saying something to a little, jovial, white-haired priest who retained her hand for some seconds.
    “So this is Lois!”
    He said it as if he had heard of her for years.
    He entreated her to sit down.
    Two other priests arrived enthusiastically and shook hands with her and addressed her as “Kieth’s little sister,” which she found she didn’t mind a bit.
    How assured they seemed; she had expected a certain shyness, reserve at least. There were several jokes unintelligible to her, which seemed to delight every one, and the little Father Rector referred to the trio of them as “dim old monks,” which she appreciated, because of course they weren’t monks at all. She had a lightning impression that they were especially fond of Kieth—the Father Rector had called him “Kieth” and one of the others had kept a hand on his shoulder all through