“Well, I'll be darned!” he said.
“Papa, papa!” his wife called, reprovingly.
“When you were younger!” Mr. Baxter repeated, with considerable irritation. “How old d' you think you are?”
“I'm going on eighteen,” said William, firmly. “I know plenty of cases—cases where—” He paused, relapsing into lethargy.
“What's the matter with him?” Mr. Baxter inquired, heatedly, of his wife.
William again came to life. “I was saying that a person's age is different according to circumstances,” he explained, with dignity, if not lucidity. “You take Genesis's father. Well, he was married when he was sixteen. Then there was a case over in Iowa that lots of people know about and nobody thinks anything of. A young man over there in Iowa that's seventeen years old began shaving when he was thirteen and shaved every day for four years, and now—”
He was interrupted by his father, who was no longer able to contain himself. “And now I suppose he's got WHISKERS!” he burst forth. “There's an ambition for you! My soul!”
It was Jane who took up the tale. She had been listening with growing excitement, her eyes fixed piercingly upon William. “He's got a beard!” she cried, alluding not to her brother, but to the fabled Iowan. “I heard Willie tell ole Mr. Genesis about it.”
“It seems to lie heavily on your mind,” Mr. Baxter said to William. “I suppose you feel that in the face of such an example, your life between the ages of thirteen and seventeen has been virtually thrown away?”
William had again relapsed, but he roused himself feebly. “Sir?” he said.