The boy jerked his head up and tried to look straight at his father; but it was no use, all the diamonds leaped into one furious white fire blinding as the heart of a furnace. He screwed his lids in a spasm.
“Put on your protectors this instant!” roared Taptuna.
Then Kak had to confess, and his father was very, very angry.
“What made you do such a stupid thing? Do you think it manly or brave? It is not even sane! I am surprised at you—behaving like Noashak! And now what are you going to wear? I cannot lead without mine—that would only mean both of us being laid up.... Tut, tut!”
“It isn’t so bad with them shut,” the sufferer answered. “If you drive more slowly, I guess I can keep along here on this smooth ground.”
Kak was about as ashamed as any boy of his age could well be, for his father had said a nasty and a just thing when accusing him of behaving like Noashak. In fact he was so ashamed that for a while he forgot how badly his eyes hurt, or else pride made him able to pretend. They were going slowly and with both hands on the sled he stumbled along somehow. The pain grew worse and worse and floods of tears kept on running down over his cheeks. He was not crying in the ordinary way. Tears come with snowblindness. Your eyes are so sore that you simply cannot hold them back. Poor Kak had every minute to wipe his face with his mitt; and when he took one hand off the sled to do this he almost always tripped. Then Okak would say:
“There! Didn’t I tell you so? If you would mind older people a little you might keep out of these troubles. But no—you are a willful boy and you have got what you deserve. You are probably in for a severe attack; and all because you would not listen to your Uncle Okak!”
This sort of conversation went all wrong with Kak. He grew angrier and angrier, and his eyes smarted worse every minute; the proof that Okak was right making him angrier still. At last he could stand the twin irritation no longer and barking out:
“Oh, do shut up! Give a chap a rest!” He sat down in the road and began to blub.
“Stop!”