CHAPTER VI

THE BAWLING-OUT

Dickie’s room in The Aura Hotel was fitted in between the Men’s Lavatory and the Linen Room.  It smelt of soiled linen and defective plumbing.  Also, into its single narrow window rose the dust of ashes, of old rags and other refuse thrown light-heartedly into the back yard, which not being visible from the street supplied the typical housewife of a frontier town with that relaxation from any necessity to keep up an appearance of economy and cleanliness so desirable to her liberty-loving soul.  The housekeeper at The Aura was not Mrs. Hudson, but an enormously stout young woman with blonde hair, named Amelia Plecks.  She was so tightly laced and booted that her hard breathing and creaking were audible all over the hotel.  When Dickie woke in his narrow room after his moonlight adventure, he heard this heavy breathing in the linen room and, groaning, thrust his head under the pillow.  With whatever bitterness his kindly heart could entertain, he loathed Amelia.  She took advantage of the favor of Sylvester and of her own exalted position in the hotel to taunt and to humiliate him.  His plunge under the pillow did not escape her notice.

“Ain’t you up yet, lazybones?” she cried, rapping on the wall.  “You won’t get no breakfast.  It’s half-past seven.  Who’s at the desk to see them Duluth folks off?  Pap’s not going to be pleased with you.”

“I don’t want any breakfast,” muttered Dickie.

Amelia laughed.  “No.  I’ll be bound you don’t.  Tongue like a kitten and a head like a cracked stove!”

She slapped down some clean sheets on a shelf and creaked toward the hall, but stopped at the open door.  Sylvester Hudson was coming down the passage and she was in no mind to miss the “bawling-out” of Dickie which this visit must portend.  She shut the linen-room door softly, therefore, and controlled her breathing.

But Dickie knew that she was there and, when his father rapped, he knew why she was there.

He tumbled wretchedly from his bed, swore at his injured ankle, hopped to the door, unlocked it, and hopped back with panic swiftness before his father’s entrance.  He sat in his crumpled pajamas amidst his crumpled, dingy bedclothes, his hair scattered over his forehead, his large, heavy eyes fixed anxiously upon Sylvester.

“Say, Poppa—­” he began.

Then “Pap’s” voice cracked out at him.

“You hold your tongue,” snapped Sylvester, “or you’ll get what’s comin’ to you!” He jerked Dickie’s single chair from against the wall, threw the clothing from it, and sat down, crossing his legs, and holding up at his son the long finger that had frightened Sheila.  Dickie blinked at it.

“You know what I was plannin’ to do to you after last night?  I meant to come round here and pull you out of your covers and onto the floor there”—­he pointed to a spot on the boards to which Dickie fearfully directed his own eyes—­“and kick the stuffin’ out of you.”  Dickie contemplated the long, pointed russet shoes of his parent and shuddered visibly.  Nevertheless in the slow look he lifted from the boot to his father’s face, there was a faint gleam of irony.