This world of piercing senseless outcries,
I hate it so! I hear the shrill,
Malignant yowls of children,
Growing up like all the rest
Without the power of thinking.
Oh, noises how accursed——”
Here her poem came to an end forever—that is to say, it had no end, was never completed, remained a fragment. Muriel jumped up, and the expressions she employed were appropriate for a maddened poet’s use, though they befitted not a maiden’s. The accursed noises across the street had become unbearable; they roused Renfrew from his petty dreams, and he straightened up in his chair to see what was going on.
“Here, here!” he said. “This isn’t the Fourth of July. Quiet down a little, will you?”
Four boys, Masters Robert Eliot, Laurence Coy, Thomas Kimball and Freddie Mears, an eight-year-old cousin of Renfrew’s, were advancing upon him, each evidently operating an imaginary machine-gun. “Bang! Bang! Bang! Bangity, Bangity, Bang! Bang!” they shouted with the utmost violence of their lungs.
“Stop it!” Renfrew commanded, and as the machine-guns seemed to be levelled straight at himself, he added: “Let me alone. I haven’t done anything to you. What do you want to kill me for?”