"That's the name. They have heard Aristides called the unjust so long that they thought they would throw a stone or two to mark their ennui, but they misunderstood the use of the stone, and so they threw it at me instead of for me--"
"Do you mean that they stoned you?"
"Oh, I shouldn't have minded the little devils, but they threw stones at Dolly, and they might easily have broken her leg. That's what made me jump out of the buggy to go after them, because I thought they needed a lesson, but I jumped on one of their infernal stones and it turned my foot and that's how I twisted my ankle. So I got back into the buggy, and was glad I didn't have far to go to get to it. Then I came on home. I never knew that walk from the street to the front door was so long."
"But your face--?"
"Oh, that was one of the stones that flew wide of the mark. The little heathen don't know how to throw straight. They ought to be kept under an apple-tree with nothing to eat until they learn how to bring down their dinner with the first throw."
Leslie clenched her hands.
"It is outrageous. I don't see how you can treat it so lightly. That they should dare to stone you,--to try deliberately to hurt you, perhaps to kill you! Oh, they would never dare if it were not for this shameful, unendurable, wicked persecution!"
"Leslie, after the example which I have always carefully given you of moderation in language,--"
"It is wicked. It is unendurable. I feel as though I were in a net that was drawing closer and closer about me. It is the secrecy of it that makes me wild. If I could only fight back! But to have some one watching in the dark, and not to know who or what it is,--to suspect everybody,--"
"Leslie, don't you realize that Dr. Burton will think you delirious if you talk like this? If you are jealous of my temporary prominence as an interesting patient,--"