“I don’t know, old man!  Jonas, how long since I’ve had a vacation?”

“Seven years, boss.”

“Sometimes I think I need one, Jonas.”

“Need one!  Boss, they work you to death!  They all say so.  Your own work’s enough to kill three men.  And now they do say the President is calling on you for all the hard jobs he don’t dare trust nobody else to do.  How come he don’t do ’em hisself?”

“Oh, I’m not doing more than my share, Jonas!  But you and I’ll have to have a vacation one of these days, sure.  Maybe we’ll go to Japan.  I’ll be home early, if I can make it, Jonas.”

Jonas nodded, and looked out the window.  “Carriage’s here, sir,” and Enoch ran quickly down the stairs.  It was only eleven o’clock when he reached home.  The rain had ceased at sundown and the night was humid and depressing.  When Enoch was once more in his pajamas, he unlocked the desk drawer and, taking out the journal, he turned to the first page and began to read with absorbed interest.

“May 12.—­This is my eighteenth birthday.  I’ve had a long ride on the top of the bus, thinking about Mr. Seaton.  He was a fine chap.  He gave me a long lecture once on women.  He said a guy must have a few clean, straight women friends to keep normal.  Of course he was right, but I couldn’t tell him or anybody else how it is with me.  He said that if you can share your worries with your friends they’re finished.  And he was right again.  But they’re some things a guy can’t share.  I did it once, back there in the Canyon, and I’ll always be glad I did.  But I was just a kid then.  The hunch that pulled me up straight then wouldn’t work now.  They never did prove she was not my mother.  They never found out a thing about me, except what Luigi and the neighbors had to tell.  She was my mother, all right.  And I don’t feel as if I ever can believe in any of them.  I don’t want to.  All I want of women is for them to let me alone and I’ll let them alone.  But a few weeks ago I had a fine idea—­to invent a girl of my own!  I got the idea in English Literature class, from a poem of Wordsworth’s.

  “Three years she grew in sun and shower;
  Then nature said, A lovelier flower
  On earth was never sown;
  This child I to myself will take,
  She shall be mine and I will make
  A lady of my own.”

“I’ve invented her and I’m going to keep a journal to her and I’ll tell her all the things I’d tell my mother, if she’d been decent, and to my sweetheart, if I could believe in them.  I don’t know just how old she is.  Somewhere in her twenties, I guess.  She’s tall and slim and she has a creamy kind of skin.  Her hair is light brown, almost gold.  It’s very thick.  She has it in braids wound all round her head.  Her eyes are hazel and she has a sweet mouth and she is very beautiful.  And she is good, and tender, and she understands everything about me.  She knows just how bad I’ve been and the fight I’m putting up to keep straight.  And every night before I go to bed, I’ll tell her what my day has been.  I’ll begin to-night by telling her about myself.