He towered above me, thin and menacing, his chin quivering with violent emotion. "So what!" he repeated. "So what? Ain't it bad enough to have a name that sounds like 'Featherbrain' without spellin' it 'Featherbrain'?" His bony hand rasped across the white stubble of his beard. He seemed about to break into tears.
"It's too bad, all right," I said, softening a little. "But lots of people have funny names."
"I don't have a funny name!" he wailed. "You're just a-tryin' to make evvybody think I have. I oughta--why--" he paused, trying to think up an awful enough fate for me, and finally fell back on his old standby: "I oughta bust evvy bone in yer head!"
I was bewildered, and finally he saw that I didn't know what he was talking about. He checked his fury long enough to explain that his name was, always had been, always would be, Featherbren, Feather b-r-e-n, not Featherbrain.
He stalked away.
I ran outside and called after him, "Mr. Featherbrain!--I mean, Mr. featherbren!"
He stopped haughtily, and waited for me to catch up with him.
"I'm really sorry," I said. "Maybe this makes us even now, even though what I did wasn't intentional. Let's be friends again, shall we?"
A smile spread over his face like the sun bursting out from behind clouds. His chin flushed rosily with pleasure. He grasped my hand and pumped it up and down vigorously. "I been awful sorry, what I done about yer water. I ain't been mad at yuh noways for a long time now," he said. "But a course I couldn't admit it."
A bout with housecleaning having kept me in the house most of the day, I beat Grant to the office one evening when the bell rang.