“She shall, she must.”
“I say she shan’t!”
“O don’t be such a blasted fool,” cried the distracted woman, rising from her chair.
Johnny sprang to his feet almost screaming, “You are the blasted fool, you, you!”
Mrs. Flynn seized a table knife and struck at her son’s face with it. He leaped away in terror, his startled appearance, glaring eyes and strained figure so affecting Mrs. Flynn that she dropped the knife, and, sinking into her chair, burst into peals of hysterical laughter. Recovering himself the boy hastened to the laughing woman. The maddening peals continued and increased, shocking him, unnerving him again; she was dying, she would die. His mother’s laughter had always been harsh but delicious to him, it was so infectious, but this was demoniacal, it was horror.
“O, don’t, don’t, mother, don’t,” he cried, fondling her and pressing her yelling face to his breast. But she pushed him fiercely away and the terrifying laughter continued to sear his very soul until he could bear it no longer. He struck at her shoulders with clenched fist and shook her frenziedly, frantically, crying:
“Stop it, stop, O stop it, she’ll go mad, stop it, stop.”
He was almost exhausted, when suddenly Pomona rushed into the room in her nightgown. Her long black hair tumbled in lovely locks about her pale face and her shoulder; her feet were bare.
“O Johnny, what are you doing?” gasped his little pale sister Pomony, who seemed so suddenly, so unbelievably, turned into a woman. “Let her alone.”
She pulled the boy away, fondling and soothing their distracted mother until Mrs. Flynn partially recovered.