When they came out of the store, they plodded to the grim parking-lot, and Vestal’s cheeriest Yuletide comment was, “My, the traffic is thick! I thought the cars were all worn-out, but seems as if these dubs have just as many as ever. Look at that lavender sports-job. My, my, and who is that driving it but that awful nigger, Borus Bugdoll. Oh! Sorry! Honestly, darling, I am sorry! I forgot that–-Well, it’s hard for me to realize.”

* * * * *

It was tacitly understood by the whole family that he was to say nothing until. Just when until would arrive had not been mentioned. He was constantly afraid, meantime, that the news of his honorable state would sift out through Brother Robert’s confusion or Uncle Emery’s fury or Pat Saxinar’s excess of courage or the conniving spite of Harold Whittick. How many people actually knew It? Fifteen in the family, eight or ten colored people—oh, too many! And who else knew, who suspected, who was watching and leering, holding a match to blow him up?

At Eliot Hansen’s buffet supper, when Violet Crenway tittered at Neil, “Oh, you red-heads are always peculiar,” what did she imply? How could she possibly know of Xavier’s letter about red hair and black?

At Ackley Wargate’s annual snow-party, what was Pomona Browler getting at when she sang the voyageur’s song, “Dans mon chemin”? That whole fiesta gave Neil a depressed feeling of leaving forever the easy white-man’s life: the cheerful guests driving in cutters through the great stand of white pine to Ackley’s enormous log lodge on frozen Lake Riflestock; old friends, pine torches, the frail afterglow at the end of a forest trail, girls, hot rum punch, rapturous singing of traditional songs like “Seeing Nellie Home” and “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”

Yes, that was all very nice, but wasn’t Ackley watching him in a curious way?

Neil felt safer when he went down to the Five Points, one afternoon just before the holidays, with small gifts for the Brewsters, Davises, Woolcapes—but not for Sophie, lest he slip.

He talked for an hour with Mary Woolcape, as he had every week or two. With her he had the comfort and reassurance of sharing in little things that once he had treasured with his mother and Vestal: meditatively gnawing a doughnut, really getting right down deep into a discussion of whether the thermometer had gone down to seventeen above this morning or only eighteen.

“Don’t worry too much, son,” said Mary, the eternal. “You have more people that love you than you know.”

* * * * *

At the Brewsters’, that afternoon, only Winthrop, back for vacation from his first year in the University, was at home. That typical bright-young-college-man in sweater and moccasin-shoes was full of yells and welcome.

“Neil! I just heard you’ve come over to my race! Oh, boy, am I glad!”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Listened to Dad and Mother doing a fine job of worrying about you.”