She hurried into the hall, but the outlaws were already descending. Just ahead of them plunged Laurence, fleeing like some rabid thing. Behind him, in the ruck of boys, Daisy Mears seemed to reach for him at the full length of her extended arms; and so the rout went on and out through the open front doors to the yard, where still was heard above all other cries, “Hay, there, Mister! I’ll show you!”
Mrs. Coy returned helplessly to the guests of sweeter behaviour, and did what she could to amuse them, but presently she was drawn to a window by language without.
It was the voice of her son in frenzy. He stood on the lawn, swinging a rake about him circularly. “Let her try it!” he said. “Let her try it just once more, an’ I’ll show her!”
For audience, out of reach of the rake, he had Daisy Mears and all his male guests save the two or three spiritless well-mannered at feeble play in the living-room; and this entire audience, including Miss Mears, replied in chanting chorus: “Daisy Mears an’ Laurunce Coy! She’s your girl!” Such people are hard to convince.
Laurence swung the rake, repeating:
“Just let her try it; that’s all I ast! Just let her try to come near me again!”
“Laurence!” said his mother from the window.
He looked up, and there was the sincerest bitterness in his tone as he said: “Well, I stood enough around here this afternoon!”
“Put down the rake,” she said. “The idea of shaking a rake at a little girl!”
The idea she mentioned seemed reasonable to Laurence, in his present state of mind, and in view of what he had endured. “I bet you’d shake it at her,” he said, “if she’d been doin’ to you what she’s been doin’ to me!”