‘I— I think I am, Fred. What time do we leave?’

‘Before midnight.’

‘I’ll start packing . . . Will you want your winter underwear?’

‘Yes — no — I don’t know — and if Howard calls up again, stall him off.’

To Lawyer Appletree’s considerable indignation, Fred insisted that they stop only for a sandwich, instead of dinner, before they set to work, at Appletree’s house.

A bank cashier, who on the telephone had even more indignantly complained, ‘But what’s all the hurry?’ went wearily into the closed bank and met Fred at Appletree’s with twenty-five hundred dollars in travellers’ cheques.

Paul Popple arrived at Appletree’s with Fred’s car, which Paul himself had been greasing and inspecting. To Appletree and Paul, Fred stated, with a refusal to argue:

‘Paul is left in charge of the agency, entirely, for the next three months, possibly much longer. Ed, I want you to draw up some kind of a fancy power of attorney for him, showing he’s the boss. He is to receive his present salary, plus fifteen per cent of all profits. The rest are to be deposited to my account in the Grangers’ National.

‘Against that account, you are to pay Howard fifteen hundred dollars tomorrow, and Sara five hundred, and thereafter, a thousand a year to each of them, except that if Sara marries, which don’t look any too doggone probable, she gets only five hundred. She is to stay in our house, meanwhile, and you are to pay the servants and taxes and insurance — I’ll give you a list of all those items — but if I send you word at the end of three months, you are to let the place furnished.

‘Now you, Ed — you have a complete power of attorney, and all I ask you to do is not follow my example and begin enjoying yourself. Because, as you are about to tell me — I’ll admit it’s a dirty trick to spoil your speech — sane, normal, honest-to-God citizens with a stake in the community don’t do anything so crazy as pull up stakes and hike out for no reason except they merely want to. No indeed! They sit around and think it over and make preparations for going so carefully that when they’re ready to go — they don’t go!’

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Last updated Sunday, March 27, 2016 at 11:57

The Prodigal Parents, by Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 35

Not till ten minutes before midnight were they off for Boston, which Fred had chosen as a safer port than New York, where Saras and Janissarys lurked in every alley.

When he returned from Appletree’s, Hazel had begun to pack, but had not finished. She was sitting on the floor of a closet, whimpering like a baby, her wet face wrinkled like a baby’s, as she pawed over a box filled with the shabby treasures of lost youth. Silently she held up to him a report card of Howard from the fourth grade — Deportment was Fair; Drawing and Language, Excellent; Arithmetic, Geography and the rest were Poor.