He laughed then, for the first time that day, and if
Evadna had been in a less vixenish temper she would have laughed
with him just as everyone else always did. But instead of that,
she began to cry again, which made Jack feel very much a brute.
"Oh, come on and be good," he urged remorsefully. But Evadna
turned and ran back into the house and into her room, and cried
luxuriously into her pillow. Jack, peeping in at the window
which opened upon the porch, saw her there, huddled upon the bed.
In the spring-house his mother sat crying silently over her
helplessness, and failed to respond to his comforting pats upon
the shoulder. Donny struck at him viciously when Jack asked him
an idle question, and Charlie, the Indian with the tumor over his
eye, scowled from the corner of the house where he was squatting
until someone offered him fruit, or food, or tobacco. He was of
an acquisitive nature, was Charlie--and the road to his favor
must be paved with gifts.
"This is what I call hell," Jack stated aloud, and went straight
away to the strawberry patch, took up his stand with his toes
against Stanley's corner stake, cursed him methodically until he
had quite exhausted his vocabulary, and put a period to his
forceful remarks by shooting a neat, round hole through Stanley's
coffee-pot.
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