“It ain’t, I tell you, and never will be past. Everybody will know that I am a horrible coward, and it will stick to me as long as I live.”
I tried to laugh, at him and pass it off, but it was of no use. He took it regularly to heart, harping constantly upon Gunson’s manner to him.
“But you are making mountains of mole-hills,” I cried at last, angrily.
“Well, that’s what they are made out of, isn’t it, only plenty of it.”
“But you say he looked at you.”
“Yes; he looked at me.”
“Well, what of that? There’s no harm in his looking at you.”
“Oh, ain’t there? You don’t know. He just can look. It was just as if he was calling me a miserable cowardly cur, and it cut me horrid. S’pose I did stick fast in the middle of that path— Bah! it isn’t a path at all—wasn’t it likely? If I hadn’t stopped and held on tight, I should ha’ been half-way back to the sea by this time, with my nose knocked off at the least, and the salmon making a meal of what was left of me. ’Course I held on as tight as I could, and enough to make me.”
“Well, never mind,” I said. “There: I won’t hear a word more about it. Perhaps I shall be a horrible coward next time, and then Gunson will look at me.”
“If he does, I shall hit him, so there.”