"Leave me alone!" cried Jo, suddenly, and the receiver clacked onto the
hook. "Leave me alone. Leave me alone." Long after the connection had
been broken.

He stood staring at the instrument with unseeing eyes. Then he turned
and walked into the front room. All the light had gone out of it. Dusk
had come on. All the light had gone out of everything. The zest had gone
out of life. The game was over--the game he had been playing against
loneliness and disappointment. And he was just a tired old man. A
lonely, tired old man in a ridiculous, rose-coloured room that had
grown, all of a sudden, drab.




III


THE TOUGH GUY

You could not be so very tough in Chippewa, Wisconsin. But Buzz Werner
managed magnificently with the limited means at hand. Before he was
nineteen mothers were warning their sons against him, and brothers their
sisters. Buzz Werner not only was tough--he looked tough. When he
spoke--which was often--his speech slid sinisterly out of the extreme
left corner of his mouth. He had a trick of hitching himself up from the
belt--one palm on the stomach and a sort of heaving jerk from the waist,
as a prize fighter does it--that would have made a Van Bibber look
rough.