XI

XI

In 1920 Roscoe Button’s first child was born. During the attendant festivities, however, no one thought it “the thing” to mention that the little grubby boy, apparently about ten years of age, who played around the house with lead soldiers and a miniature circus, was the new baby’s own grandfather.

No one disliked the little boy whose fresh, cheerful face was crossed with just a hint of sadness, but to Roscoe Button his presence was a source of torment. In the idiom of his generation Roscoe did not consider the matter “efficient.” It seemed to him that his father, in refusing to look sixty, had not behaved like a “red-blooded he-man”—this was Roscoe’s favorite expression—but in a curious and perverse manner. Indeed, to think about the matter for as much as a half an hour drove him to the ……