They shook hands, and he planted a clumsy kiss on her face. Then, blushing with pleasure, she stepped back a pace and regarded him with the half bantering expression she had used so often as a child.
“Well, well, well!” she said. “You haven’t changed much, George! A little stouter, maybe, but I reckon I’d have known you!”
They spoke now quietly about Aunt Maw and about the funeral, saying the strained and awkward things that people always say when they talk of death. Then, this duty done, there was a little pause before they resumed their natural selves once more.
The two men looked at each other and grinned. When they had been boys together Randy had seemed to George more like Mercutio than anybody he had ever known. He had had a small, lean head, well shaped, set closely with blond hair; he had been quick as a flash, light, wiry, active, with a wonderful natural grace in everything he did; his mind and spirit had been cleat, exuberant, incisive, tempered like a fine Toledo blade. In college, too, he had been the same: he had not only done well in his classes, but had distinguished himself as a swimmer and as quarter-back on the football team.
But now something caught in George’s throat as he looked at him and saw what time had done. Randy’s lean, thin face was deeply furrowed, and the years had left a grey deposit at his temples. His hair was thinning back on both sides of the forehead, and there were little webbings of fine wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. It saddened George and somehow made him feel a bit ashamed to see how old and worn he looked. But the thing he noticed most was the expression in Randy’s eyes. Where they had once been clear and had looked out on the world with a sharp and level gaze, they were now troubled, and haunted by some deep preoccupation which he could not quite shake off even in the manifest joy he felt at seeing his old friend again.
While they stood there, Jarvis Riggs, Parson Flack, and the Mayor came slowly down the platform talking earnestly to one of the leading real estate operators of the town, who had come down to meet them. Randy saw them and, still grinning, he winked at George and prodded him in the ribs.
“Oh, you’ll get it now!” he cried in his old extravagant way. “At all hours, from daybreak to three o’clock in the morning—no holds barred! They’ll be waiting for you when you get there!” he chortled.
“Who?” said George.
“Haw-w!” Randy laughed. “Why, I’ll bet they’re all lined up there on the front porch right now, in a reception committee to greet you and to cut your throat, every damned mountain grill of a real estate man in town! Old Horse-face Barnes, Skin-‘em-alive Mack Judson, Skunk-eye Tim Wagner, The Demon. Promoter, and Old Squeeze-your-heart’s-blood Simms, The Widder and Orphan Man from Arkansas—they’re all there!” he said gloatingly. “She told them you’re a prospect, and they’re waiting for you! It’s your turn now!” he yelled. “She told them that you’re on the way, and they’re drawing lots right now to see which one gets your shirt and which one takes the pants and B.V.D.s! Haw-w!”—and he poked his friend in the ribs again.
“They’ll get nothing out of me,” George said, laughing, “for I haven’t got it to begin with.
“That doesn’t matter!” Randy yelled. “If you’ve got an extra collar button, they’ll take that as the first instalment, and then—haw-w! they’ll collect your cuff-links, socks, and your suspenders in easy payments as the years roll on!”
He stood there laughing at the astounded look on his friend’s face. Then, seeing his sister’s reproving eye, he suddenly prodded her in the ribs, at which she shrieked in a vexed manner and slapped at his hand.
“I’ll vow, Randy!” she cried fretfully. “What on earth’s the matter with you? Why, you act like a regular idiot! I’ll vow you do!”
“Haw-w!” he yelled again. Then, more soberly, but still grinning: “I guess we’ll have to sleep you out over the garage, Monk, old boy. Dave Merrit’s in town, and he’s got the spare room.” There was a slight note of deference in his voice as he mentioned Merrit’s name, but he went on lightly: “Or if you like—haw-w!—there’s a nice room at Mrs. Charles Montgomery Hopper’s, and she’d be glad to have you!”
George looked rather uncomfortable at the mention of Mrs. Charles Montgomery Hopper. She was a worthy lady and he remembered her well, but he didn’t want to stay at her boarding-house. Margaret saw his expression and laughed:
“Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho! You see what you’re in for, don’t you? The prodigal comes home and we give him his choice of Mrs. Hopper or the garage! Now is that life or not?”