This Side of Glory Read Online Free Page B

struck it when they were digging up the silver after the Civil War.”
    “Oh yes,” Eleanor said softly. She smiled as she watched the firelight flashing into the old depression. There was something touching and authentic about such a flaw, like the little irregularities that distinguish handmade lace from machinery imitations. “I can’t tell you how I’m enjoying this!” she exclaimed. “It’s so different from anything I’ve ever seen before. I live in a house in New Orleans that was built nine years ago, and we’re always complaining that it isn’t modern enough.”
    “I’ve often thought it would be mighty convenient to live in a new house,” said Kester. “One where the plumbing always works and the attic stairs aren’t in danger of dropping on your head. May I have some coffee, please ma’am?”
    She refilled his cup. “If you knew my father,” she continued, “you’d understand what I’m trying to tell you. He’s so entirely of today. It’s the typical American story—a self-made man, so proud of being able to give his children the chances he never had.”
    “I think I’d have known even if you hadn’t told me,” Kester said thoughtfully, “that you had a streak of power. You’re like your father, aren’t you?”
    “People say I am. I’ve been working for him a long time—during the summers while I was at college, and regularly since I finished.”
    “Where’d you go to college?”
    “Barnard. Where did you?”
    “Tulane. Did you like college?”
    “Not particularly,” said Eleanor. “I’m not very bookish, and the other girls seemed—well, so young. When you’ve lived on the river and seen real struggles, men fighting days and nights to keep a flood back, you get used to fundamentals—you can’t believe the most important thing on earth is the band of ribbon around your hair. I hope I don’t sound like somebody trying to be superior, but do you understand?”
    “Yes,” he returned seriously, and added, “I’ve never known a girl like you before. What else about the girls at school?”
    Eleanor brought her knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around them. “Well, the way they whispered with such curiosity about things I had taken for granted all my life. Birth and death are always going on in a levee camp, and of course I had known about them, and about the honky-tonk tent and why I mustn’t go down there. I don’t suppose I was ever very girlish.”
    “You’re not girlish,” Kester said, smiling. He was sitting crosslegged on the floor, listening with interest. “Go on. Tell me about a levee camp.”
    Though she did not often talk so much about herself, she continued. She told him about her cook, whose name was Randa and who had diamonds in her teeth, because Randa’s husband was killed in an accident on a levee job and the government paid her compensation; and Randa, afraid some fortune-hunter would try to marry her, devised that means of keeping her wealth to herself. She told him about Jelly Roll, who was the aristocrat of the camp, partly because he earned two dollars and a quarter a day and could afford shirts of flowered percale and partly because he was a genius at his work. Jelly Roll’s job was to keep the slope of the levee graded, and as the drivers came up with the scoops he told them where to dump the dirt; though he had only a grade-stake in the middle and a tow-stake on either side to guide him he gave directions so fast that he could direct the dumping of three wheelers at once, and with such accuracy that when the contractor measured the slope it was always right, three-to-one on the inside and four-to-one on the outside. “I like anybody who has a passion for doing his job well, like that,” said Eleanor. “That’s one reason I admire my father so much. Dad builds the best levees on the river. He’s incredibly careful, studying the soil formation and patterning the levee like a fine dress before he moves a spoonful of