“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you did,” she said. “It would be presackly like you. Doing things like that is why you haven’t got a friend but me, and you have not got me any more. I’m done with you! You needn’t hang around me any more.”
Then Mahala turned a little back, very straight, with very square shoulders and a very high head, and marched down the street toward the school house, while the other girls crowded around her, delighted that she and Edith were having trouble.
Almost exploding with rage over his humiliation, hurt from his punishment, and thoroughly frightened at the condition of his new suit, Junior started back home, while with each step that he took in that direction his mental stress increased. In culmination he entered the room bellowing, while his father and mother were still at breakfast. His mother threw up her hands and cried out in horror over his condition. His father was not only shocked and angry over whatever it was that had returned to him in such a condition the boy who was the pride of his heart, the very light of his eyes, but he had a lively remembrance of what that velvet suit had cost him and the pride he had taken in purchasing it for Junior because he meant always that he should be the best-dressed boy in the town. He seized Junior, shook him violently, and raised his hand to strike, all other emotions submerged in the one impulse that made money his God even above love. Junior tore from his hands, and running to his mother, dodged behind her. His father pursued him. Mrs. Moreland arose, spreading her skirts and her arms to cover Junior.
“Wait, Martin! Wait!” she cried.
It was evident that her heart was bound up in the boy far above any financial considerations, and it was also evident that she was afraid of the angry man she was facing; but she was not so much afraid that she was not willing to interpose her own body, if by so doing she could screen the boy. At the same time she cried to him, “Junior! Tell your father what happened to you. Explain!”
Under the shelter of her protection, Junior stopped crying. He wiped his eyes and faced his father defiantly.
“If I was on the City Council like you are, I’d fix up the sidewalks of this nasty old town so the boards wouldn’t fly up and throw folks down and ruin their clothes,” he cried.
His father stared at him in amazement. Instantly Junior’s mother agreed with him.
“That is quite true, Martin,” she said. “Only last week Jenny Sherman tripped on a loose board on her way to church. She almost broke her knee and ripped the whole front out of a very expensive silk dress. Some of these days somebody’s going to sue this town for damages and you will have the biggest part of them to pay. The only wonder is that Junior is not in worse shape than he is.”
Reassured by her backing, Junior came from behind her, but he still held her arm. Martin Moreland surveyed the pair scornfully.