Nothing less attractive than a trip to Greenfield lures Mr. Riley out of Lockerbie Street. He never takes a vacation. "There isn't so much in a vacation as some folks think," he says. "I like home best." It is with the greatest difficulty that he can be induced to go anywhere, even in Indianapolis. Hostesses at high functions lament the absence of the celebrity they'd planned to lionize. He simply won't accept their invitations. But let Trustin Igoe call out of the side window, "I say, J. W., there's 'wortermelon' at our house this evenin'. Come on over!" And he doesn't miss the engagement.
"The best dressed man in town."
Even his own relatives usually come to Lockerbie Street to see him. There is his sister, Mrs. Henry Eitel, and her family; another sister, Mrs. Payne, and her daughter; a brother, John, and an aunt, Mrs. Frank Riley. With them also he is something more or less than a poet. "Aunt," he will say to Mrs. Riley when she comes on Sunday afternoons, "How well I recollect first time I saw you. I was a little tad at a church picnic, and Uncle Frank told me the pretty young lady in the white dress was going to be my aunt. My, but you looked nice, as nice as,—um, as nice as lemon pie!" And the lady flutters pleasantly and looks over her glasses and says, "You always were my boy, Jim." He likes that. There aren't many people left now to call him Jim.
Much as he enjoys playing at being a boy, though, there are times when he can't. Not long ago he met Trustin Igoe coming out of his yard one morning and said, "Lord, Trustin, what you going to raise next? Those ducks are just about more'n I can stand!" Mr. Igoe has had dogs and cats and chickens and pigeons and ducks. And the pigeons coo over Mr. Riley's chamber window and the ducks quack under it.
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