April is the cruellest of months.
Eugene winced, moved away, and then stood quietly, checked by memory of the old revolt from awe.
He found Margaret in the library reading to the children from The Water Babies.
“Mr. Leonard says to ask you if I can go?” he said.
And her eyes were darkened wholly.
“Yes, you scamp.
Go on,” she said.
“Tell me, boy,” she coaxed, softly, “can’t you be a little bit better?”
“Yes’m,” he promised, easily. “I’ll try.”
Say not the struggle naught availeth.
She smiled at his high mettled prancing nervousness.
“In hell they’ll roast thee like a herrin’,” she said gently.
“Get out of here.”
He bounded away from the nunnery of the chaste breast and quiet mind.
As he leaped down the stairs into the yard he heard Dirk Barnard’s lusty splashing bathtub solo.
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.
Tyson Leonard, having raked into every slut’s corner of nature with a thin satisfied grin, emerged from the barn with a cap full of fresh eggs.
A stammering cackle of protest followed him from angry hens who found too late that men betray.
At the barnside, under the carriage shed,
“Pap” Rheinhart tightened the bellyband of his saddled brown mare, swinging strongly into the saddle, and with a hard scramble of hoofs, came up the hill, wheeled in behind the house, and drew up by Eugene.
“Jump on, ‘Gene,” he invited, patting the mare’s broad rump.
“I’ll take you home.”
Eugene looked up at him grinning.
“You’ll take me nowhere,” he said.
“I couldn’t sit down for a week last time.”
“Pap” boomed with laughter.
“Why, pshaw, boy!” he said.
“That was nothing but a gentle little dog-trot.”
“Dog-trot your granny,” said Eugene.
“You tried to kill me.”
“Pap” Rheinhart turned his wry neck down on the boy with grave dry humor.
“Come on,” he said gruffly.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I’ll teach you how to ride a horse.”
“Much obliged, Pap,” said Eugene ironically.
“But I’m thinking of using my tail a good deal in my old age.
I don’t want to wear it out while I’m young.”
Pleased with them both,
“Pap” Rheinhart laughed loud and deep, spat a brown quid back over the horse’s crupper, and, digging his heels in smartly, galloped away around the house, into the road.
The horse bent furiously to his work, like a bounding dog.
With four-hooved thunder he drummed upon the sounding earth. Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.
At the two-posted entry, by the bishop’s boundary, the departing students turned, split quickly to the sides, and urged the horseman on with shrill cries.
“Pap” bent low, with loose-reined hands above the horse-mane, went through the gate like the whiz of a cross-bow.
Then, he jerked the mare back on her haunches with a dusty skid of hoofs, and waited for the boys to come up.
“Hey!”
With high bounding exultancy Eugene came down the road to join them.
Without turning, stolid Van Yeats threw up his hand impatiently and greeted the unseen with a cheer.
The others turned, welcoming him with ironical congratulation.
“‘Highpockets,’” said
“Doc” Hines, comically puckering his small tough face, “how’d you happen to git out on time?”
He had an affected, high-pitched nigger drawl.