Each Man's Son Read Free Page B

whatnot reaching three quarters of the way to the ceiling.
    She was touching a piece of chamois to her nose when she heard the grinding of wheels and knew the streetcar had cleared the bridge. Quickly she put on her hat and left the house, but when she reached the sidewalk she saw the tram as it stopped at the corner seventy-five yards up the row. There was no point in hurrying now. The tram took on its passengers, turned the corner and went on its way into Broughton. It would be half an hour before the next one followed.
    Mollie went back into the house and stood quietly in the hall, wondering whether she ought not to work some more at the rug instead of going into Broughton to see the moving picture. But tomorrow was the Sabbath and this was the one night in the week she called her own; to break the routine she had made of the last four years was hard to do. It was the routine that had helped her forget how long four years could be.
    She went back into the parlor and took off her hat. She looked at the rug and even picked up the hook, then she laid it down again. She touched a match to the wick in the lamp, turned it low, and then stood for some minutes considering her reflection in the mirror. She did not think she had changed much. Archie would find little difference in her if he came home now. An idea crossed her mind and she looked about the room until her eyes found a small framed photograph on the top shelf of the whatnot. She took it down and went back to the mirror, comparing her reflection with the girl in the picture until she admitted to herself that she had changed a great deal. She looked no more than a child in that wedding photograph as she stood hanging on to Archie’s arm. They had both been so young; Archie twenty and she three years younger. She looked at Archie’s thick hair and remembered the way it felt when her fingers brushed it the wrong way. He had never been able to part his hair, it had been so stiff. Even in that poor picture his eyes looked hurt and exposed, and no wonder, she thought, with the life his father had made for him. She had been the first person in all Broughton to understand and admire Archie–before he became a hero whom nobody understood and everyone admired.
    She put the photograph back on the whatnot and then sighed without realizing she was doing so, as she passed the palms of her hands down the neat curves of her hips and flanks. For the first time in four years a thought opened wide in her mind as she tried to examine it. Would Archie ever come home? It was more than a year since he had sentany money and eight months since she had even received a postcard from him. But she knew where he was at the moment, and that was a lot more than she usually knew about him.
    Did Archie ever intend to come home? She put the thought away again as she pulled open a drawer in the table by the window and took out a piece of newspaper which she had folded and stuffed in there the day before. Spreading it out flat on the table, she turned up the lamp and began to read it slowly, beginning with the Halifax dateline under the banner on the sports page. Archie’s name was often to be found in this column, but never before had there been so much.
    Up from New York comes word that Archie MacNeil’s next opponent is being groomed for a shot at Jack Dillon’s light-heavyweight title. They say this boy Packy Miller is quite a slugger and you can get odds at four to one that he’ll beat Archie, and two to one he’ll win by the knockout route. The fight’s to be held in Trenton, New Jersey, by the way, Miller’s home town.
    If these odds are anywhere near right, all we can say is that Archie has gone a long way over the hill. We saw Packy Miller in Boston last fall, and the boy who fought that night couldn’t have stayed in the same ring with the Archie MacNeil who flattened Tim O’Leary two years ago that great night in Providence.
    Mollie remembered the