“I suppose you got hung upside down like that accidentally.”
“We was only just playing ‘Hang the Spy’!”
“And scaring your good, dear mother in consequence so she’s nearly a nervous wreck. I’m going to see you remember never to do such a thing again.”
“Anna!” interposed my mother, “don’t be a fool!”
“You keep out of this!” snapped Mrs. Forge. “I can run my own young ones without assistance from the neighbors.”
And there, before that distressed audience, Nathan “got it good.”
III
I have not narrated this episode especially to excoriate Anna Forge. I mention it because—horror of horrors!—among the teams to be blocked in the road by Amos Winch’s cart was the neat piano-box buggy and mare of Caleb Gridley. The Duchess was out for a drive with the Dresden Doll.
Nathan knew that the princess of his dreams was beholding him “catching it.” And the welts of that switch did not manufacture half as much pain as the hurts which resulted to his dignity. For a boy has dignity. It is usually a hard, honest, legitimate dignity in sharp contrast to mere self-elation too often masquerading under that name among older people. And that boyish dignity is a heritage. In after years it is the genesis of that invaluable attribute, Self-respect.