"What about the job, sir?" he broke out. "Can Jakey Harris apply for
it?"

Mr. Wicker smiled, and it was strange, in that dim room inconsistently
lit by the lights of passing cars, Mr. Wicker looked exactly like a
venerable, wizened old man, when Chris knew perfectly well he was not.

It's peculiar, he thought, the tricks your eyes play on you. Guess I'm
tired.

"Jakey Harris for the job?" Mr. Wicker remarked, "Why no--there is no
job to fill. You filled it, Christopher!"

[Illustration]

And all at once, without any good-bye, Chris found himself outside on
the top step. The din of cars and honking horns rushed at him like a
gape-mouthed monster; the drumming whine and roar from the freeway
shook the ground, and up ahead the lights of the People's Drugstore
looked garish but friendly. Across the way as he turned to go home,
Chris glanced at the two tumbledown storehouses opposite, the winch
and tackle broken, and panes of glass missing from the windows.

As he reached the corner of Wisconsin and M Street, Mike rushed
breathlessly up.

"Hey! Here I am! Not much later than I said I'd be, either! What you
got?" he asked, falling into step beside Chris and looking down at the
bottle.

"Mr. Wicker gave it to me," Chris replied in a colorless voice.

"What for?"

"I dunno. Guess he didn't need it."

A silence fell, and then Mike said as they passed the strong light of
a shop window, returning down bustling M Street toward 28th: "Say--you
been running--or sitting by a fire? You look almost sunburnt. And
look--"

They stopped dead while Mike put a grubby forefinger on a mark on
Chris's jaw. "I never noticed that before. It shows up white an'
plain. Must have been a pretty deep cut ya had there!"

For the first time in what felt like hours, Chris smiled, and the
smile became a grin.

"It sure was!" he said reminiscently.

"Oh--an' by the way," Mike said much farther along as he left Chris to
go on to his own house, "your Aunt Rachel called my ma and told her
your mother was so much better she could come home soon. Seems that
your father's on his way back too." He walked off and then turned to
call from a quarter-block away, "Bet you'll be glad to have your own
folks at home?"

Chris's grin deepened but he did not reply, nor even wave, for fear of
dropping the bottle.

N Street, then Dumbarton Avenue, dropped behind him, and he came to
Happy's Grocery with the bookshop on the opposite corner. He stood
lo