What supernatural
self-possession! Sally fixed her eye on him and began again, resolved to
blast him out of his serenity this time if she knew how to apply the
dynamite that is concealed in certain forms of words when those words are
properly loaded with unexpected meanings.
"And next it goes on and on and on about the eldest son--not the
favorite, this one--and how he is neglected in his poor barren boyhood,
and allowed to grow up unschooled, ignorant, coarse, vulgar, the comrade
of the community's scum, and become in his completed manhood a rude,
profane, dissipated ruffian--"
That head still drooped! Sally rose, moved softly and solemnly a step or
two, and stood before Tracy--his head came slowly up, his meek eyes met
her intense ones--then she finished with deep impressiveness--
"--named Spinal Meningitis Snodgrass!"
Tracy merely exhibited signs of increased fatigue. The girl was outraged
by this iron indifference and callousness, and cried out--
"What are you made of?"
"I? Why?"
"Haven't you any sensitiveness? Don't these things touch any poor
remnant of delicate feeling in you?"
"N--no," he said wonderingly, "they don't seem to. Why should they?"
"O, dear me, how can you look so innocent, and foolish, and good, and
empty, and gentle, and all that, right in the hearing of such things as
those! Look me in the eye--straight in the eye.
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