“Oh, Marcia,” he cried miserably. “Don’t take it that way. I’d have thrown up my job sooner than write it if I’d known that you’d feel it so.”
“It does not matter about me. But you! How could you have done it! How could you have used his gentle, sweet, simple philosophy—his talks between friends in the shop—to make a mock of him?”
“I did n’t. I swear I did n’t.”
She put the clipping into his hand. Re-read, now, the words were self-damnatory. Jeremy groaned.
“It has hurt him so terribly,” she said.
“You’ve seen him?”
“Yes. He has resigned his place on the School Board. Mr. Dolge advised him to get off before he was laughed off.”
Jeremy stared at the words of his facile portraiture as if they had suddenly been informed with venom. “And he was so proud of it!” he muttered.
“It was a large thing in his little life,” said the girl. “He feels disgraced.”
Wackley’s easy and cynical assumption that the subject of the sketch would be “crazy for publicity” recalled itself to Jeremy. He swore beneath his breath. “When did you see Eli?