There’s no need for algebra where two and two make five.”
Miss Amy turned her handsome gypsy eyes on Eugene.
“Go on.
I’ve seen enough of you.”
She made a strong weary gesture of dismissal.
Hatless, with a mad whoop, he plunged through the door and leaped the porch rail.
“Here, boy!” Margaret called.
“Where’s your hat?”
Grinning, he galloped back, picked up a limp rag of dirty green felt, and pulled it over his chaotic hair.
Curly tufts stuck through the gaping crease-holes.
“Come here!” said Margaret gravely.
Her nervous fingers pulled his frayed necktie around to the front, tugged down his vest, and buttoned his coat over tightly, while he peered at her with his strange devil’s grin.
Suddenly she trembled with laughter.
“Good heavens, Amy,” she said.
“Look at that hat.”
Miss Amy smiled at him with indifferent sleepy cat-warmth.
“You want to fix yourself up, ‘Gene,” she said, “so the girls will begin to notice you.”
He heard the strange song of Margaret’s laughter.
“Can you see him out courting?” she said.
“The poor girl would think she had a demon lover, sure.”
“As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover.”
His eyes burned on her face, flowing with dark secret beauty.
“Get along, you scamp!” she ordered.
He turned, and, crying fiercely in his throat, tore down the road with bounding strides.
All the dusk blurred in her eyes.
“Leave him alone!” she whispered to no one.
“Leave him alone!”
A light wind of April fanned over the hill.
There was a smell of burning leaves and rubble around the school.
In the field on the hill flank behind the house a plowman drove his big horse with loose clanking traces around a lessening square of dry fallow earth.
Gee, woa.
His strong feet followed after.
The big share bit cleanly down, cleaving a deep spermy furrow of moist young earth along its track.
John Dorsey Leonard stared fascinated out the window at the annual rejuvenation of the earth.
Before his eyes the emergent nymph was scaling her hard cracked hag’s pelt.
The golden age returned.
Down the road a straggling queue of boys were all gone into the world of light.
Wet with honest sweat, the plowman paused at the turn, and wiped the blue shirting of his forearm across his beaded forehead.
Meanwhile, his intelligent animal, taking advantage of the interval, lifted with slow majesty a proud flowing tail, and added his mite to the fertility of the soil with three moist oaty droppings.
Watching, John Dorsey grunted approvingly.
They also serve who only stand and wait.
“Please, Mr. Leonard,” said Eugene, carefully choosing his moment, “can I go?”
John Dorsey Leonard stroked his chin absently, and stared sightlessly at his book.
Others abide our question, thou art free.
“Huh?” he purred vaguely.
Then, with a high vacant snigger he turned suddenly, and said:
“You rascal, you!
See if Mrs. Leonard wants you.”
He fastened his brutal grip with keen hunger into the boy’s thin arm.