“Chuckle, chuckle! — laugh of gloatation.”
“Tee-hee, tee-hee, tee-hee! . . laugh of titterosity.”
“Snuh-huh, snuh-huh, snuh-huh! . . laugh of gluttonotiousness.”
The vigorous warmth of burning wood filled their room pleasantly: over their sheltered heads the dark gigantic wind howled through the earth.
O sheltered love, nooked warmly in against this winter night.
O warm fair women, whether within a forest hut, or by the town ledged high above the moaning seas, shot upon the wind, I come.
Guy Doak toyed gently at his belly with his right hand, and stroked his round chin slowly with his left.
“Now let me see,” he whined, “what he gives on this.”
Their laughter rang around the walls.
Too late, they heard the aroused stealthy foot-falls of the master, creaking down the hall.
Later — silence, the dark, the wind.
Miss Amy closed her small beautifully kept grade book, thrust her great arms upward, and yawned.
Eugene looked hopefully at her and out along the playing court, reddened by the late sun.
He was wild, uncontrollable, erratic.
His mad tongue leaped out in class.
He could never keep peace a full day.
He amazed them.
They loved him, and they punished him piously, affectionately.
He was never released at the dismissal hour.
He was always “kept in.”
John Dorsey noted each whisper of disorder, or each failure in preparation, by careful markings in a book.
Each afternoon he read the names of delinquents, amid a low mutter of sullen protest, and stated their penalties.
Once Eugene got through an entire day without a mark.
He stood triumphantly before Leonard while the master searched the record.
John Dorsey began to laugh foolishly; he gripped his hand affectionately around the boy’s arm.
“Well, sir!” he said.
“There must be a mistake.
I’m going to keep you in on general principles.”
He bent to a long dribbling suction of laughter.
Eugene’s wild eyes were shot with tears of anger and surprise.
He never forgot.
Miss Amy yawned, and smiled on him with slow powerful affectionate contempt.
“Go on!” she said, in her broad, lazy accent.
“I don’t want to fool with you any more.
You’re not worth powder enough to blow you up.”
Margaret came in, her face furrowed deeply between smoke-dark eyes, full of tender sternness and hidden laughter.
“What’s wrong with the rascal?” she asked.
“Can’t he learn algebra?”
“He can learn!” drawled Miss Amy.
“He can learn anything.
He’s lazy — that’s what it is.
Just plain lazy.”
She smacked his buttock smartly with a ruler.
“I’d like to warm you a bit with this,” she laughed, slowly and richly.
“You’d learn then.”
“Here!” said Margaret, shaking her head in protest.
“You leave that boy alone.
Don’t look behind the faun’s ears.
Never mind about algebra, here.
That’s for poor folks.