his mother—an old woman who, when she was young, had twin boys one of whom wandered away; and for twenty-five years she has known only the one who turned to crime. Now she knows Jerry; he knows her. Naturally he's bewildered a bit about his future.
I am back in the bean business; that's where I belong. I'm at my desk. I've returned.
But I've returned rather like the soldier Kipling sings about who returned to Hackensack "but not the same." And I'm not the same for a similar reason.
"Things 'ave transpired which made me learn,
The size and meanin' of the game."
I've thought about that a lot, these days. My parents picked up Jerry and adopted him to "broaden" me and immediately set about the business of making him as much like ourselves as possible. They succeeded to the point where we both would have gone through life bean merchants, and happy at it, but for Keeban.
He's the one that did things to us.
But for him, the game would have been my club and golf course, the Drive, the Drake, the other items I've mentioned.
I'd have married, I suppose, some girl with my exact previous notions of the game.
