The Progress of Love

There was more work than ever for Callie. Edgar got tonsillitis and stayed home from classes. Sam, on his own at the business college, realized how much he had come to enjoy it. He liked the noise of the typewriters—the warning of the bells, the carriages banging back. He liked ruling the account-book pages with a straight pen, making the prescribed heavy and fine lines. He especially liked figuring out percentages and quickly adding up columns of numbers, and dealing with the problems of Mr. X and Mr. B, who owned a lumberyard and a chain of hardware stores, respectively.
    Edgar was out of school nearly three weeks. When he came back, he had fallen behind in everything. His typing was slower and sloppier than it had been at Christmastime, he smeared ink on the ruler, and he could not understand interest tables. He seemed listless, he grew discouraged, he stared out the window. The lady teachers were somewhat softened by his looks—he was lighter and paler since his illness; even his hair seemed fairer—and he got away with this indolence and ineptitude for a while. He made some efforts, occasionally tried to do homework with Sam, or went to the typing room at noon to practice. But no improvement lasted, or was enough. He took days off.
    While he was sick, Edgar had received a get-well card. It showed a green dragon in striped pajamas propped up in bed. On the front of the card were the words “Sorry to Hear your Tail is Draggon,” and inside “Hope that Soon, You’ll have it Waggon.” Down at the bottom, in pencil, was written the name Chrissie.
    But Chrissie was in Stratford, training to be a nurse. How would she know Edgar was sick? The envelope, with Edgar’s name on it, had come through the mail but had a local postmark.
    “You sent it,” Edgar said. “I know it’s not her.”
    “I did not,” said Sam truthfully.
    “You sent it.” Edgar was hoarse and feverish and racked with disappointment. “You didn’t even write in ink.”
    “How much money have we got in the bank?” Edgar wanted to know. This was early May. They had enough to pay their board until the end of the term.
    Edgar had not been to the college for several days. He had been to the railway station, and he had asked the price of a oneway ticket to Toronto. He said he meant to go alone if Sam wouldn’t go with him. He was wild to get away. It didn’t take long for Sam to find out why.
    “Callie might have a baby.”
    “She isn’t old enough,” said Sam. Then he remembered that she was. But he explained to Edgar that he was sure they hadn’t been sufficiently thorough.
    “I’m not talking about that time,” said Edgar, in a sulky voice.
    That was the first Sam knew about what had been going on when Edgar stayed away from school. But Sam misunderstood again. He thought Callie had told Edgar that she was in trouble. She hadn’t. She hadn’t given him any such information or asked for anything or made any threats. But Edgar was frightened. His panic seemed to be making him half sick. They bought a package of cake doughnuts at the grocery store and sat on the stone wall in front of the Anglican church to eat them. Edgar took one bite and held the doughnut in his hand.
    Sam said that they had only five more weeks at college.
    “I’m not going back there anyway. I’m too far behind,” said Edgar.
    Sam did not say that he had pictured himself lately working in a bank, a business-college graduate. He saw himself in a three-piece suit in the tellers’ cage. He would have grown a mustache. Some tellers became bank managers. It had just recently occurred to him that bank managers did not come into the world ready-made. They were something else first.
    He asked Edgar what kind of jobs they could get in Toronto.
    “We could do stunts,” Edgar said. “We could do stunts on the sidewalk.”
    Now Sam saw what he was up against. Edgar was not joking. He sat there with one bite out of his doughnut and proposed this way of making a living in Toronto. Stunts on the sidewalk.
    What about their parents? This only started crazier plans.
    “You could tell them I was kidnapped.”
    “What about the police?” said Sam. “The police go looking for anybody that’s kidnapped. They’d find you.”
    “Then don’t tell them I’m kidnapped,” Edgar said. “Tell them I saw a murder and I have to go into hiding. Tell them I saw a body in a sack pushed off the Cedar Bush Bridge and I saw the men that did it and later I met them on the