He’s walking alone, carrying, in secret rebellion, a set of foils that belong to his father. June has been giving him and Johnny both lessons in fencing when he visits, not real fencing, but stage fencing, and Edwin is desperate to be better at this than his athletic little brother. He has a ways to go. The last time he and June fenced, Edwin missed his parry and took a foil right in the eye. The point had been blunted. Still, for days his mother feared he’d lose it, or if not the eye itself, then the use of it. The sclera turned red as a ruby, not merely veined with red, but a solid bloody mass encasing the iris. No more fencing for Edwin, Mother declared, while leaving open the question of whether Johnny was still allowed.

Johnny is enormously popular. He runs with a gang of young toughs who call themselves the Baltimore Bully Boys. He’s good with his fists. Edwin, by contrast, studies the violin. He excels at his dancing lessons. He has in his mind the person he wants to be, artistic, sensitive, and maybe a touch eccentric. He creates this person daily with costumes and props, voice and posture.

He wears a short cape like Romeo. He wears his hair mussed and curly like Byron. He’s been seen on the streets with a pet lamb. His teacher, Susan Hyde, a marmish woman with spectacles and corkscrew curls, adores him. Miss Hyde is renowned both for her gentle manner and for her firm hand on the rattan cane. Edwin has experienced both, the latter in no way eclipsing the former. In fact, in later years, Edwin will say it was the caning that made him love her.

If he meant to make himself a target, then he’s bagged it. The Bully Boys would beat him up themselves except that he’s Wilkes’ brother, and they are forced to protect him instead.

His hair blows into his eyes and he swipes it back with his free hand. In the window of the house he’s passing, a little white dog barks angrily at him. The factory whistle sounds. Trees rattle their branches and the wind carries the smell of pigs.

A boy, probably younger than Edwin, but definitely bigger, falls in beside him as he walks. This boy is wearing a flat sea cap and hasn’t yet grown into his front teeth. They protrude slightly, the tips of them exposed by his lip. His face is a mass of freckles. Edwin doesn’t recognize him. “I know you,” the boy says.

People often recognize Father on the street. They stop to say hello and Father always says hello back, so at first Edwin thought his father knew them all. But Father soon put him straight. Everyone knows Tom Fool, Father had said.