II.
This is the telegram Basil wrote:
Am sick but not so badly could you come at once please
Your loving sister
By four o’clock Basil still knew academically that he had a family, but they lived a long way off in a distant past. He knew also that he had sinned, and for a time he had walked an alley saying “Now I lay me’s” over and over for worldly mercy in the matter of Albert Moore’s spectacles. The rest could wait until he was found out, preferably after death.
Four o’clock found him with Joe in the Shoonover’s pantry where they had chosen to pass the last half hour, deriving a sense of protection from the servants’ presence in the kitchen. Mrs. Shoonover had gone, the guests were due—and as at a signal agreed upon the doorbell and the phone pealed out together.
“There they are,” Joe whispered.
“If it’s my family,” said Basil hoarsely, “tell them I’m not here.”
“It’s not your family—it’s the people for the party.”
“The phone I mean.”
“You’d better answer it.” Joe opened the door to the kitchen. “Didn’t you hear the doorbell, Irma?”
“There’s cake dough on my hands and Essie’s too. You go, Joe.”
“No, I certainly will not.”
“Then they’ll have to wait. Can’t you two boys walk?”
Once again the double summons, emphatic and alarming, rang through the house.
“Joe, you got to tell my family I’m not here,” said Basil tensely.“I can’t say I’m not here, can I? It’ll only take a minute to tell them. Just say I’m not here.”
“We’ve got to go to the door. Do you want all the people to go home?”
“No, I don’t. But you simply got to—”
Irma came out of the kitchen wiping her hands.
“My sakes alive,” she said. “Why don’t you tend the door before the children get away?”
They both talked at once, utterly confused. Irma broke the deadlock by picking up the phone.
“Hello,” she said. “Keep quiet Basil, I can’t hear. Hello—hello…. Nobody’s on that phone now. You better brush your hair, Basil—and look at your hands!”
Basil rushed for the sink and worked hastily with the kitchen soap.
“Where’s a comb?” he yelled. “Joe, where’s your comb?”
“Upstairs, of course.”
Still wet Basil dashed up the back stairs, realizing only at the mirror that he looked exactly like a boy who had spent most of the day in the al
