for literature!" He flicked his cigarette ashes on the floor. "They don't charge you anything for printing your stuff—unless you want to bring out a book. You have to pay for a book. There's money in writing school readers, I understand—and City Directories. If they want anything to read after they leave school, they buy a set of Dickens or Thackeray, and enjoy the latest thing in literature. I'd sooner write ads for a New York department store on a salary of three thousand a year."
Don heard him without heeding him. . . . They were going to New York! At one stroke they were setting themselves free! He crossed his knees to hide a trembling that took him in the legs, standing on the verge of a resolution, afraid of the leap. . . . At a pause in Pittsey's babble, he asked Conroy: "When are you going?"
"I'm waiting for my month's cheque from the governor. It ought to be here Monday. Why?"
Both Pittsey and he saw something in Don's face. They watched him in a puzzled silence. He blinked and swallowed like a boy about to make his first dive. "Well," he said, pale, "I may go with you."
"What!"
"Wha-a-at!"
"I've been thinking of it for some time. . . . I'll never pass these exams. . . . I've been saving every cent I could. ... I had a quarrel with my father at Christmas—about not studying law" He gulped on his secret, with an expression of beseeching them not to press him for the whole truth.
Pittsey came to his relief with a shrill laugh.
