Читать книгу Look Homeward, Angel. A Story of the Buried Life онлайн

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"What say? Who's that? Who's that?" asked Eliza with comic rapidity, looking up from her darning.

"J. T. Collins—that's who! He's only worth about two hundred thousand. 'Steve,' he said, just like that, 'if I had your brains'"—He would continue in this way with moody self-satisfaction, painting a picture of future success when all who scorned him now would flock to his standard.

"Oh, yes," said he, "they'll all be mighty anxious then to shake Little Stevie's hand."

Gant, in a fury, gave him a hard beating when he had been expelled from school. He had never forgotten. Finally, he was told to go to work and support himself: he found desultory employment as a soda-jerker, or as delivery boy for a morning paper. Once, with a crony, Gus Moody, son of a foundry-man, he had gone off to see the world. Grimy from vagabondage they had crawled off a freight-train at Knoxville, Tennessee, spent their little money on food, and in a brothel, and returned, two days later, coal-black but boastful of their exploit.