But all the people he met at the Erlichs’ talked.  If they asked him about a play or a book and he said it was “no good,” they at once demanded why.  The Erlichs thought him a clam, but Claude sometimes thought himself amazing.  Could it really be he, who was airing his opinions in this indelicate manner?  He caught himself using words that had never crossed his lips before, that in his mind were associated only with the printed page.  When he suddenly realized that he was using a word for the first time, and probably mispronouncing it, he would become as much confused as if he were trying to pass a lead dollar, would blush and stammer and let some one finish his sentence for him.

Claude couldn’t resist occasionally dropping in at the Erlichs’ in the afternoon; then the boys were away, and he could have Mrs. Erlich to himself for half-an-hour.  When she talked to him she taught him so much about life.  He loved to hear her sing sentimental German songs as she worked; “Spinn, spinn, du Tochter mein.”  He didn’t know why, but he simply adored it!  Every time he went away from her he felt happy and full of kindness, and thought about beech woods and walled towns, or about Carl Schurz and the Romantic revolution.

He had been to see Mrs. Erlich just before starting home for the holidays, and found her making German Christmas cakes.  She took him into the kitchen and explained the almost holy traditions that governed this complicated cookery.  Her excitement and seriousness as she beat and stirred were very pretty, Claude thought.  She told off on her fingers the many ingredients, but he believed there were things she did not name:  the fragrance of old friendships, the glow of early memories, belief in wonder-working rhymes and songs.  Surely these were fine things to put into little cakes!  After Claude left her, he did something a Wheeler didn’t do; he went down to O street and sent her a box of the reddest roses he could find.  In his pocket was the little note she had written to thank him.

VII

It was beginning to grow dark when Claude reached the farm.  While Ralph stopped to put away the car, he walked on alone to the house.  He never came back without emotion,—­try as he would to pass lightly over these departures and returns which were all in the day’s work.  When he came up the hill like this, toward the tall house with its lighted windows, something always clutched at his heart.  He both loved and hated to come home.  He was always disappointed, and yet he always felt the rightness of returning to his own place.  Even when it broke his spirit and humbled his pride, he felt it was right that he should be thus humbled.  He didn’t question that the lowest state of mind was the truest, and that the less a man thought of himself, the more likely he was to be correct in his estimate.

Approaching the door, Claude stopped a moment and peered in at the kitchen window.  The table was set for supper, and Mahailey was at the stove, stirring something in a big iron pot; cornmeal mush, probably,—­she often made it for herself now that her teeth had begun to fail.  She stood leaning over, embracing the pot with one arm, and with the other she beat the stiff contents, nodding her head in time to this rotary movement.  Confused emotions surged up in Claude.  He went in quickly and gave her a bearish hug.