"Puffec'ly lovely," replied the man who had brought the evil news. "Everything," he stretched out his lean hand,--"everything smilin' an' gay--an' merry as a marriage bell."
Pap rubbed his talon-like hands together.
"Boys," said he, "I done first-rate this afternoon--I done first- rate. I've made money, a wad of it--and don't you forget it."
"You never allow us to forget it," said Ajax. "We all wish you would," he added pointedly.
"Eh?"
He stared at my brother. The other men in the store showed their teeth in a sort of pitiful, snarling grin. Each was sensible of a secret pleasure that somebody else had dared to bell the cat.
My brother continued, curtly: "This is not the time nor the place for you to buck about what you've done and whom you've done. Under the present circumstances--you're an old man--what you've left undone ought to be engrossing your attention."
"Meanin'?"
Pap had glanced furtively from face to face, reading in each rough countenance derision and contempt. The masks which the poor wear in the presence of the rich were off.
"I mean," Ajax replied, savagely--so savagely that the old man recoiled and nearly fell off the barrel--"I mean, Mr. Spooner, that the diphtheria has come to Paradise, and is likely to stay here so long as there is flesh for it to feed on."