The Collected Stories of William Humphrey Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t mind saying that it has been a while since I had quail! Is it tonight that you want me to come? And what time would your wife like me to arrive?”
    â€œWhat time do you generally take your supper?”
    â€œWhy, I generally take it around eight, but—”
    â€œThen eight,” said my father, “is when you shall have it tonight.”
    My mother suggested I be given my supper early and sent to bed. My father disagreed, as she had meant him to, saying that it was an evening I should want to remember, and that I was old enough to behave like a little gentleman now.
    I was posted by the window to watch for him. Dusk spread in the street and it began to be dark. The street lamps came on at the corners of the block and I saw my friends come out of their houses up and down the street and gather in the light to play, and I wondered if they knew why I was not with them. I was hungry from the smells of the kitchen and restless in my Sunday clothes.
    At last I saw him round the corner. He wore his bowler and carried a stick with which he lightly touched the ground about every third step he took. My friends in the light of the lamp watched him and when he was past turned to whisper among themselves, for some of them dared to think such people as Mr. Forester old-fashioned and amusing. He carried something cone-shaped and when he was halfway down the block I saw that it was flowers wrapped in paper.
    At the door my mother took his coat and thanked him for the flowers and said she hoped he had not had too hard a day in the store. I was embarrassed at her mentioning that he had put in a working day, and using the word store , but my mother’s sympathy for Mr. Forester was deeper than the town’s, and went beyond any hopeless efforts to keep up appearances.
    Mr. Forester turned from my father and extended his fist to me and opened it palm up. It held one of the knives I had seen in the showcase in his store. It was a pearl-handled knife, and as we went into the living room he said, “I thought you might like that one because I was very fond of one just like it when I was about your age. It was given to me by a Mr. J. B. Hood. Did you ever hear of him, son?”
    I started to shake my head, then I thought and cried, “Do you mean John Bell Hood?”
    â€œSir,” my mother reminded me.
    â€œOh, you know about John Bell Hood, do you?” said Mr. Forester.
    My father guided him to a chair, saying, “Does he know about him! Sometimes I believe he thinks he is John Bell Hood.”
    â€œWell,” said Mr. Forester, “he couldn’t want to be a better man. Now could he?”
    My mother excused herself to look after the birds. My father mixed drinks.
    â€œYes,” said Mr. Forester, “John Bell Hood was often in our house when I was a lad. A great soldier and a great gentleman. And a cagey cotton buyer.”
    I laughed, but weakly, for I would rather he had not mentioned that last.
    â€œYou remember what General Lee said, son? ‘In the tight places I always count on the Texans.’ If they had had the sense to follow up Hood’s victory at Chickamauga the South might have won the war.”
    â€œI can vouch for this mash, Mr. Forester,” said my father. “I watched it made. It goes down like mother’s milk.”
    Mr. Forester took a sip, held the glass to the light, cocked an eye appreciatively at my father, then for my benefit he put on a moral frown and, nodding the glass at me, said, “He was right about this stuff, too—John Bell Hood. You remember, when he was wounded at Chancellorsville they tried to make him take a drink of whiskey to ease his pain, and he said he would rather endure the pain than break the promise he had made his mother never to touch a drop.”
    I felt my face redden and I stole a glance at my father.
    â€œThat was not John Bell Hood, sir,” I said. “That was Jeb Stuart at