"I expect he's feeling mean!" Mrs. Wibird spoke depreciatingly. "His nose must be dreadful sore; and his feelings—he is so sensitive! I do think Kitty Ross ought to be had up for driving that way!"
"Now, mother! Don't you say a word against Kitty! Wilson oughtn't to have asked her to bring him home, tired as she was, and after midnight, too. He ought to have walked, as the other boys did. I hear Bobby Chanter said——"
Here the door opened, and Wilson appeared, his small eyes glaring fiercely, though inadequately, over his crimson potato-nose.
"I am going to bed!" he announced. "My head aches, and this chattering drives me distracted."
"So do, dear!" his mother soothed him. "So do! I'll light the oil stove, and bring your supper up to you soon as it's ready."
"I brought you some cinnamon buns, Wilson!" said Melissa, who could not harbor irritation more than two minutes. "I hope your head'll be better in the morning, dear!"
Wilson flung away with no other answer than a snarl. He ate the buns, though, when they came up hot in a napkin; made a very good supper on the whole. The tray disposed of, he locked his door, and then proceeded to unlock a cupboard and take out a bottle and glass. Poor Wilson! we liked to think it was not his fault entirely, that some of his ancestors had been hard drinking as well as hard-bitted; but that made it no easier for Mrs. Wibird and Melissa.
When putting back the bottle and glass, his hand touched something else in the cupboard, something hard and smooth and cold. He muttered under his breath; groped for the object, and brought it out. A pistol! not of the newest make or deadliest calibre, but still a practical weapon, capable of being loaded and fired. Wilson's face cleared as he looked at it. Here was a friend for a desperate man! He nodded darkly several times; stepped to the mirror to see how he looked when performing this act, but recoiled with a groan. He should, properly speaking, have thrust the pistol in his bosom, but pajamas have no bosoms: besides, the steel was cold. Finally, he put it under his pillow, and went to sleep to the tune of murder, suicide, and three columns in the City newspaper.
Youth and sleep can do much, even for the foolish and befuddled. By morning Wilson was once more the master of Ross House, waving in his guests (and Kitty's) with courtly gesture. He was roused from this happy dream by the untimely entrance of Billy, the clerk of the Mallow House. Billy had just looked in on his way down town, at 6:45, to find Melissa preparing breakfast, Wilson in bed, and likely to remain there. Billy guessed he would go up and say howdy. Melissa protested: Billy grinned cheerfully, and went up.
"Morn'n, Wilse! h'are'y?" (I find the last word cannot be spelled. It is chiefly H and broad A, but the other letters are there, somehow.) Wilson grunted and turned a striped shoulder pointedly on the intruder.