Before Kenton reached the elevator with Boyne, who was rubbing his knees and fighting back the tears, he heard the clerk’s voice saying, formally, to the porters, “Baggage out of 35 and 37” and adding, as mechanically, to Bittridge: “Your rooms are wanted. Get out of them at once!”
It seemed the gathering of neighborhood about Kenton, where he had felt himself so unfriended, against the outrage done him, and he felt the sweetness of being personally championed in a place where he had thought himself valued merely for the profit that was in him; his eyes filled, and his voice failed him in thanking the elevator-boy for running before him to ring the bell of his apartment.
The next day, in Tuskingum, Richard, Kenton found among the letters of his last mail one which he easily knew to be from his sister Lottie, by the tightly curled-up handwriting, and by the unliterary look of the slanted and huddled address of the envelope: The only doubt he could have felt in opening it was from the unwonted length at which she had written him; Lottie usually practised a laconic brevity in her notes, which were suited to the poverty of her written vocabulary rather than the affluence of her spoken word.
“Dear Dick” [her letter ran, tripping and stumbling in its course], “I have got to tell you about something that has just happened here, and you needent laugh at the speling, or the way I tell it, but just pay attention to the thing itself, if you please. That disgusting Bittridge has been here with his horrid wiggy old mother, and momma let him take Ellen to the theatre. On the way home he tried to make her promise she would marry him and at the door he kissed her. They had an awful night with her hiseterics, and I heard momma going in and out, and trying to comfort her till daylight, nearly. In the morning I went down with poppy and Boyne to breakfast, and after I came up, father went to the reading-room to get a paper, and that Bittridge was there waiting for him, and wanted to speak with him about Ellen. Poppa wouldent say a word to him, and he kept following poppa up, to make him. Boyne says be wouldent take no for an ansir, and hung on and hungon, till poppa threatened to hitt him with his cane. Then he saw it was no use, and he took his hand and rubbed it in poppa’s face, and Boyne believes he was trying to pull poppa’s nose. Boyne acted like I would have done; he pounded Bittridge in the back; but of course Bittridge was too strong for him, and threw him on the floor, and Boyne scraped his knee so that it bledd. Then the porters came up, and caught Bittridge, and wanted to send for a policeman, but father wouldent let them, and the porters took Bittridge to the desk and the clerk told him to get out instantly and they left as soon as old Wiggy could get her things on. I don’t know where they went, but he told poppa they were going home to-day any way. Now, Dick, I don’t know what you will want to do, and I am not going to put you up to anything, but I know what I would do, pretty well, the first time Bittridge showed himself in Tuskingum. You can do just as you please, and I don’t ask you to believe me if you’re think I’m so exciteable that I cant tell the truth. I guess Boyne will say the same. Much love to Mary. Your affectionate sister,