National Avenue by Booth Tarkington (book recommendations website .txt) 📕

“Why, Henry dear!” Mrs. Oliphant intervened, touching her grandson lightly upon the shoulder. “You don’t mean that! This is our dear friend that lives next door and likes little boys. You must⁠—”

“I won’t!” Henry shouted. “I don’t care who she likes, I don’t want to shake hands.” He intended no discourtesy; he merely wished to be distinguished, and in continuance of that desire immediately doubled himself, placing the top of his head upon the ground. “I can turn a summerset,” he said. “Want to see me do it? Watch me! Look!”

He failed to accomplish the proposed feat, but at once attempted it again. “Watch me!” he shouted. “Look at me! Why don’t you watch me?”

He went on with his attempts, more and more shrilly demanding the public attention that had wandered from him. Martha had begun to talk to Mrs. Oliphant; and Lena came close to Harlan for a moment. “Didn’t leave her accent in Italy!” she murmured in her little voice; and passed on toward the house, displaying daintily upon the short grass pretty white slippers that a girl of twelve might have worn.

Harlan shrugged his shoulders, and his thought was, “Parisian doll!” as it usually was when his sister-in-law irritated him. Certainly, if there were a Parisienne present it was Lena and not the unchanging Martha in her Paris clothes.

The little boy shouted louder and louder, since attention was still denied him;⁠—he tugged at his father’s coat, wailing shrilly, “Look at me, papa! Oh, my goodness, can’t you watch me?”

Meanwhile Martha, beaming down upon Mrs. Oliphant, nevertheless sent an impersonal glance over that amiable lady’s head to where the child thus besieged his father, who seemed to be in a temporary stupor. Dan looked much older, Martha thought, than when she had gone away; and, though she had not expected him to retain forever an unlined face and his fine figure, she felt a little dismay at finding him settling into what was strikingly like middle-age. He was older and heavier than he need have been, she thought, and a stranger might well have guessed Harlan to be ten years the younger of the two.

Nowhere in Dan, with his broadened, preoccupied, and lined face, his heavy, careless figure and his middle-aged careless clothes, could she discover the jolly boy she had known, or the youth she had danced with in college holidays, or the jaunty young man so dashingly clad who had come home from New York engaged to be married, and told her so on a February walk she would always remember. What was more to her, nowhere in this almost middle-aged man of business, now beginning to be successful, could she discover signs of the spirit that once would have brought him instantly to welcome home an old friend, even if a wife did threaten. Yet he was a man who would have swept Lena aside if she had attempted to interfere with his business, Martha thought⁠—and it was not a thought that made her happier. She moved to depart.

But at this, the insistent Henry, irritated beyond measure by the general indifference to his acrobatics, flung himself upon her, pulling fiercely at her dress. “My goodnuss! Can’t you watch me? What’s the matter with you? You got to watch me!”

There was a sound of tearing as he pulled at her;⁠—Mr. Oliphant sprang to him and removed him, but Martha picked up the lace flounce partly torn from her skirt, and laughed at the mutilation of her finery. “No harm at all,” she said, as both Mr. and Mrs. Oliphant began to apologize for Henry; but their apologies and her reassurances were not distinctly audible; nor were her words of departure as she turned toward the gate with Harlan. Henry had instantly squirmed from his grandfather’s grasp and was shriller and louder than ever.

“Now I guess you’ll watch me!” he shrieked. “Look at me, gran’pa! Look at me, everybody!” He appealed also to his mother, who had paused near the front steps and stood there, laughing. “Look at me, mamma! Watch me, now! I’m goin’ to turn a summerset!” He charged into his father’s legs, yelling, “You’re not lookin’ at me, papa! My goodnuss! Can’t you watch me?” And he continued to be overwhelmingly vociferous, but Dan, for the moment, paid no attention.

He was wondering how it had happened that Martha had been so long at home and he had not taken the few steps⁠—just to next door⁠—to tell her he was glad she had come back. What if Lena had made a fuss? It would have been right to go. And there came to him faintly, faintly, the ghost of a recollection of a starry night when he and Martha stood not far from where they were now in this glaring noon. It had strangely seemed to him then that he had had a gift from her, something made of no earthly stuff, something enriching and ineffable. He had forgotten it; but now he remembered, and at the very moment of remembering, it seemed to him that the gift was gone.

He stared blankly at her as she passed through the open gateway, holding her torn dress and chatting with Harlan; while against Dan’s legs the vehement Henry was battering himself and shrieking, “Look at me, papa! My goodnuss! Can’t you look at me!”

Dan consented, and when Martha and Harlan entered the Shelbys’ gate, beyond, they saw that the acrobat, still piercingly vociferous, had collected the attention of all of his audience but one. His mother still stood near the stone front steps, laughing, not looking at him; but his grandparents and his father were applauding him. He was insatiable, however; keeping them in the hot sun while he performed other athletic feats. “You shan’t go in the house, gran’ma!” he screamed. “I’m goin’ to hop on one leg all across the yard. You got to watch me. You watch me, gran’ma!”

Mrs. Oliphant obediently returned, and the new entertainment began.

“Isn’t it awful?” Harlan groaned. “Isn’t it dismaying to think what children are coming to