CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In Rainbow where even “hired girls” stay in the same family for twenty years, a year of service is lightly regarded. If a young man began as a grocery clerk at eighteen he was usually found in the same store, engaged in slicing cheese and weighing out sugar at forty. Jobs were permanent. So, at the end of Angus Burke’s first twelve months in the bank, he was still looked upon by the citizenry as having “started to work for Mr. Woodhouse.” They were commencing to be accustomed to seeing him in the bank, but had not begun to forgive him for being there…. The year had made no impression upon Rainbow; upon Angus its effect had been impressive.
He was now drawing toward his majority—older than his years, still of the class of silent men, never volunteering conversation, smiling seldom, laughing never—in public. The world offered him little to laugh at. It was only latterly that he laughed at all; such as it was it was intimate, secluded laughter, never to be paraded, and kept for his intimate friends.
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