"Well, Martha!" he sighed.
She stopped short, as if he had struck her.
"'Martha'? What's the matter? You aren't mad at me, are you, Stookie?"
"How could I be angry with you, Marg—er—Martha?"
"Then why don't you call me Margy-wargleums?"
He stared at her. Her whimsical smile, trembling to a piteously pretty hint of terror, overwhelmed him. He hesitated, then shoved back his chair and, rising, caught her to him so tightly that she gasped out, "Oo!" There it was again! He laughed like an overgrown cub as he cried:
"Why don't I call you Margy-wargleums? Well, what a darned fool I'd be not to! Margy-wargleums!"
To such ruin does love—the blind, the lawless, the illiterate child—bring the noblest intelligences and the loftiest principles.