But a grey chaos was settling over me. I trembled often like a person
under a strange seizure. My mind did not readily respond to questions.
It went here and there in a welter. Day dreams chased through my mind
one after another in hurried heaps of confusion. I was lost ... groping
... in a curious new world of growing emotions leavened with grievous,
shapeless thoughts.
Strange involuntary rhythms swung through my spirit and body. Fantastic
imaginations took possession of me.
And I prayed at night, kneeling, great waves of religious emotion going
over me. And when my father saw me praying by the bedside, I felt
awkwardly, shamefully happy that he saw me. And I took to posing a
childishness, an innocence toward him.
Jenkins, the little stringy feed merchant, had two daughters, one
thirteen, Alva, and another Silvia, who was fifteen or sixteen.. and a
son, Jimmy, about seven....
It was over Alva and Silvia that my father and Jenkins used to come
together, teasing me. And, though the girls drew me with an enchanting
curiosity, I would protest that I didn't like girls ... that when I
became full-grown I would never marry, but would study books and mind my
business, single....
After this close, crafty, lascivious joking between them, my father
would end proudly with--
"Johnnie's a strange boy, he really doesn't care about such things.
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