He was not entirely heedless of her own welfare. He had felt the animosity and ridicule that had gathered like sultry electricity in the atmosphere when Emma had murmured at the station those words that Orson had not heard.
Orson, seated with Tudie at one end of the porch, heard them now at the other end of the porch as they were quoted with mockery by Arthur. Orson and Tudie forgot their own quarrel in the supernal rapture of eavesdropping somebody's else wrangle.
"When you got off the train," Arthur groaned, "you knocked me off my pins by what you said to your father and mother."
"And what did I say?" said Em in innocent wonder.
"You said, 'Oh, my dolling m'mah, I cahn't believe it's you'!"
"What was wrong with that?"
"You used to call her 'momma' and you called me 'darrling.' And you wouldn't have dared to say 'cahn't'! When I heard you I wanted to die. Then you grabbed your father and gurgled, 'Oh, p'pah, you deah old angel!' I nearly dropped in my tracks, and so did your father. And then you turned to me and I knew what was coming! I tried to stop you, but I couldn't. And you said it! You called me 'Ahthuh'!"
"Isn't that your name, deah?"
"No, it is not! My name is 'Arrthurr' and you know it! 'Ahthuh'! what do you think I am? My name is good honest 'Arrthurr.'" He said it like a good honest watch-dog, and he gnarred the "r" in the manner that made the ancients call it the canine letter.
Amélie, born Emma, laughed at his rage. She tried to appease him. "I think 'Ahthuh' is prettiah. It expresses my tendah feelings bettah. The way you say it, it sounds like garrgling something."