"
Eddie sat staring at the man for a dreadful minute. In that
minute the last of his glorious youth, and ambition, and zest of
life departed from him.
He got off the train at the next town, and the western man
offered him some money, which Eddie declined with all his old-time
sweetness of manner. It was rather a large town, with a great many
busy people in it. Eddie went to a cheap hotel, and took a room,
and sat on the edge of the thin little bed and stared at the car-
pet. It was a dusty red carpet. In front of the bureau many feet
had worn a hole, so that the bare boards showed through, with a
tuft of ragged red fringe edging them. Eddie Houghton sat and
stared at the worn place with a curiously blank look on his face.
He sat and stared and saw many things. He saw his mother, for one
thing, sitting on the porch with a gingham apron over her light
dress, waiting for him to come home to supper; he saw his own
room--a typical boy's room, with camera pictures and blue prints
stuck in the sides of the dresser mirror, and the boxing gloves on
the wall, and his tennis racquet with one string broken (he had
always meant to have that racquet re-strung) and his track shoes,
relics of high school days, flung in one corner, and his
gay-colored school pennants draped to form a fresco, and the cush-
ion that Josie Morenouse had made for him two years ago, at
Christmas time, and the dainty white bedspread that he, fussed
about because he said it was too sissy for a boy's room--oh, I
can't tell you what he saw as he sat and stared at that worn place
in the carpet.
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