Run To Seed | Page 6

and a letter with it, and that night Jim could not have bought a
chew of tobacco. The next letter he got from home was heavy. Jim
smiled over it a good deal, and cried a little too. He wondered how
Kitty looked in her new dress, and if the barrel of flour made good
bread; and if his mother's shawl was warm.
One day he was changed to the passenger service, the express. It was a
promotion, paid more, and relieved him from Dick Rail.
He had some queer experiences being ordered around, but he
swallowed them all. He had not been there three weeks when Mrs.
Wagoner was a passenger on the train. Carry was with her. They had
moved to town. (Mr. Wagoner was interested in railroad development.)

Mrs. Wagoner called him to her seat, and talked to him--in a loud voice.
Mrs. Wagoner had a loud voice.
It had the "carrying" quality. She did not shake hands; Carry did and
said she was so glad to see him: she had been down home the week
before--had seen his mother and Kitty. Mrs. Wagoner said, "We still
keep our plantation as a country place." Carry said Kitty looked so well;
her new dress was lovely. Mrs. Wagoner said his mother's eyes were
worse. She and Kitty had walked over to see them, to show Kitty's new
dress. She had promised that Mr. Wagoner would do what he could for
him (Jim) on the road. Next month Jim went back to the freight service.
He preferred Dick Rail to Mrs. Wagoner. He got him. Dick was worse
than ever, his appetite was whetted by abstinence; he returned to his
attack with renewed zest. He never tired--never flagged. He was
perpetual: he was remorseless. He made Jim's life a wilderness. Jim
said nothing, just slouched along silenter than ever, quieter than ever,
closer than ever. He took to going on Sunday to another church than the
one he had attended, a more fashionable one than that. The Wagoners
went there. Jim sat far back in the gallery, very far back, where he
could just see the top of Carry's head, her big hat and her face, and
could not see Mrs. Wagoner, who sat nearer the gallery. It had a
curious effect on him: he never went to sleep there. He took to going
up-town walking by the stores--looking in at the windows of tailors and
clothiers. Once he actually went into a shop and asked the price of a
new suit of clothes. (He needed them badly.) The tailor unfolded many
rolls of cloth and talked volubly: talked him dizzy. Jim looked wistfully
at them, rubbed his hand over them softly, felt the money in his pocket;
and came out. He said he thought he might come in again. Next day he
did not have the money. Kitty wrote him she could not leave home to
go to school on their mother's account, but she would buy books, and
she was learning; she would learn fast, her mother was teaching her;
and he was the best brother in the world, the whole world; and they had
a secret, but he must wait.
One day Jim got a big bundle from down the country. It was a new suit
of clothes. On top was a letter from Kitty. This was the secret. She and
her mother had sent for the cloth and had made them; they hoped they

would fit. They had cried over them. Jim cried a little too. He put them
on. They did not fit, were much too large. Under Dick Rail's fire Jim
had grown even thinner than before. But he wore them to church. He
felt that it would have been untrue to his mother and Kitty not to wear
them. He was sorry to meet Dick Rail on the street. Dick had on a black
broadcloth coat, a velvet vest, and large-checked trousers. Dick looked
Jim over. Jim winced, flushed a little: he was not so sunburned now.
Dick saw it. Next week Dick caught Jim in a crowd in the "yard"
waiting for their train. He told about the meeting. He made a double
shot. He said, "Boys, Jim's in love, he's got new clothes! you ought to
see 'em!" Dick was graphic; he wound up: "They hung on him like
breechin' on his old mule. By ----! I b'lieve he was too ------ stingy to
buy 'em and made 'em himself." There was a shout from the crowd.
Jim's face worked. He jumped for him. There was a handspike lying
near and he seized it. Some one grabbed him, but he shook him off as if
he had been a child. Why he did not kill Dick no one ever knew. He
meant