THE STEADFAST HEART
feet uneasily. He feared to risk affront and indignity, feared Rainbow would show openly, as it always had done, its contempt for him. But, after a while, he lifted his eyes and said slowly, “I’ll come — for you.”
“I knew you would,” said Lydia, delighted in her victory. “You’ll like it, too, see if you don’t.”
“You don’t know…. You don’t understand. People always remember….” He had forgotten the party now, forgotten everything save recollections of his boyhood, terrible recollections. “I’m the same boy. They don’t call murderer after me, but they think it. It’s as bad. I can see them thinking it…. Ten years ago they wouldn’t let me go to the same school with their children. They won’t want me at parties with their children to-day.”
“Don’t you want any friends?” she demanded.
“I would like more friends. But I have Uncle Dave and Mr. Browning and Jake Schwartz and Bishwhang—but I—would like more.” His voice was wistful.
“Jake Schwartz and Bishwhang!” Lydia said with an air of supercilious contempt.
Angus frowned. “They’re my friends,” he said simply. “I wouldn’t trade them for any others in the world.”
“But aren’t you dreadfully dull? You have no fun at all. What do you do?”
194
