# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 38/Number 2/The Doormat's Revolt

from The Red Book Magazine, Dec 1921, pp. 37–41, 112–117. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
The Doormat's Revolt
By Booth Tarkington
Illustration: He completed the furious sketch by all the distortions of which his nose, forehead and gifted ears were capable. Daisy squealed.
Illustrated by William Van Dresser
MISS DAISY MEARS, nine years of age, not comely but ambitious to be prominent, sat in her family pew upon a summer Sunday morning, thinking continuously though not religiously. She had ever a busy mind, but the sermon failed to touch it, which was no fault of her pastor. To Daisy all sermons were what Chinese music is to the lover of melody; she regarded them as merely a protraction of sound conveying mysterious satisfactions to those dreary and incomprehensible foreigners, grown people.
She sat beside her mother and her tall brother Renfrew, and for a little while amused herself by playing that the fine crease of Renfrew's trousers was the sharp edge of a knife. She pretended that it cut her when she touched it, so that her finger must first be solaced in her mouth, then bandaged with her handkerchief; but upon Renfrew's crossing his knees and turning decisively away, she could no longer reach the crease, and sought other means of enlivenment.
The great hollow of the church was shot with warm-colored light from the stained windows, where shafts of tremulous golden dust obliquely ascended and descended; and Daisy pretended to herself that the swimming and glimmering particles of dust were crowds of tiny people, that each gilded, infinitesimal speck, appearing and vanishing, had an errand of its own somewhere. “Lookin' for their chuldren,” she whispered to herself. Their children were lost, she decided; and the microscopic parents were almost instantly lost, too, as her eyes tried to follow them; but their places were always taken at once by other tiny fathers and mothers seeking their own truants.
After a while she tired of watching the everlasting fluctuations of the atomies, and decided to see what was going on in the pew behind her. Nothing exciting appeared to be happening there, though in the hope that something might turn up, she looked at the occupants long enough and thoroughly enough to make them uneasy. Only her white straw hat with its blue ribbon her forehead and her eyes were visible to them, but her eyes were elfin bright with curiosity and inscrutable derision. And the old gentleman whom she longest transfixed with this disturbing gaze had a new sin in his heart presently, in spite of knowing well what day it was and where he sat, supposedly in meekest worship.
He found himself compelled to ascertain if all the buttons of his white waistcoat were fastened, and discovering one to be missing entirely, just where she gazed with the strongest interest, he coughed fiercely, altered his attitude grew red, and frowned at the child; but he was forced to look away from her before she looked away from him. Unexpectedly she yawned, expressing herself audibly, and seeming to comment thus upon his behavior: then she turned forward again, not realizing that she had caused the Recording Angel to add hatred-in-a-church to the long list of the responsibilities of this old gentleman.
Next her attention centered itself upon the pew just in front of her. Therein sat a fat boy, not little, yet of about her own age; Master Robert Eliot, wearing out a great ennui by various sluggish devices. The top of his head was all that was to be seen of him from the rear just now, for he had sunk so low in his seat that this round head, covered with short, mouse-colored hair, rested against the mahogany rail. He was almost motionless, but not quite; there was perceptible a slight but fairly rhythmic movement of his scalp, and Daisy understood that he was practising his accomplishment of moving his ears. As he had but the single talent, Robert was naturally assiduous in bringing it to perfection.
Beside him, and next to their father, sat his sister Muriel who was grown up, but had not been so long grown up as she thought she had. That is to say, she was twenty-one, a year younger than Daisy's brother Renfrew, who may have learned something more from the sermon than Daisy did, but certainly not a great deal more. Seated directly behind Muriel, what he learned was everything possible about the color of her hair under stained-glass conditions of light; and rapt in this study, he looked indeed appropriate to the house he sat in—no other worshiper in the place showed a countenance so devout.
RENFREW'S little sister was aware of his preoccupation; she had often before seen him looking at the graceful Muriel, and she realized that something portended between the two; but of what it actually consisted, her idea was contentedly the vaguest. She thought of all such matters on the adult plane as a prairie farm-hand thinks of rapprochements between Uruguay and Paraguay; and though she had an impression that Muriel was often cross with Renfrew, who was always incorrigibly amiable, she felt no concern in the matter, and never imagined that she herself might bear any relation to it. She looked at her brother, saw him looking at Muriel, as usual when that was possible, and found no inspiration in a state of affairs so customary Her thoughts busied themselves in other directions.
She began to wonder what everybody in the congregation would do if she suddenly made a loud noise of a kind not to be expected in church—if she should utter a piercing squeal, for instance, or if she should speak right out and say something queer and wild, like, “Oh, gracious me!” She said it mentally, then pictured the effect; and a little awed giggle escaped her. “My! Wouldn't they hop up!” she whispered to herself. “Everybody in the whole place'd be hoppin' up!”
The thought alarmed her, but at the same time it fascinated her. Dwelling upon it, she felt that she was dangerously near yielding to the temptation; and although she restrained herself, she imagined little scenes in which she had become the heroine of such an episode. In these she saw other children, full of amazement, pointing her out upon the street, or gathered about her in meek wonder and admiration. The unfortunate truth about Daisy was that she loved making a sensation, and when there was a chance of making one, the circumstances must be overwhelming to discourage her.
She tried a very little squeal, but really intended no one except herself to hear it; however, she pretended that it had been a loud one and that the congregation hopped up. Then she tried one a little louder, upon which her mother quietly gave her a handkerchief without looking at her. “I wasn't sneezin', Mamma,” Daisy whispered
“Then be quiet!” her mother returned sharply, in her ear; and Daisy decided not to try any more squealing without provocation. If something should make her squeal,—something she could afterward point out to her parents as a good and reasonable cause for anybody's squealing—that would be different, and she felt that in such a case she could squeal with plausibility. She began to meditate upon this—and her elfin eyes rested thoughtfully upon the round head of mouse-colored hair reposing against the mahogany rail before her. The hair stirred slowly like sod disturbed by a lazy spade: Robert was still exercising his ears
Unnoticed, she leaned forward in a thoughtful attitude, and a moment later the talented ears caught a whisper so artfully directed at them that no other ears heard it.
“Ole fat Robert Eliot!” this whisper said. “Robert Eliot's so fat because he eats so much grease.”
Upon this the moving ears ceased to move, became rigid and alert
“Robert Eliot eats grease,” said the whisper. “Ole, dirty, horrable automobile grease!”
Insulted, the ears reddened, for this was a point in neighborhood history upon which Robert was jealous. He had indeed eaten of the strange food named, not of his ignorant hunger, but honorably, upon a dare. Nevertheless he had suffered a great deal from the tongue of scandal, which had insisted upon misinterpreting the feat; and he permitted no one to make such references as the whispers made and go scathless. Moreover he had long since bitterly warned all his acquaintances that he would hear never another word upon the subject—yet the whisper continued.
She jeered loudly. “It's because you're afraid o' Laurence! Laurence is littler than you, an' you're afraid of him!"
“Poor ole fatty Robert!” it said. “He likes it. He likes it better'n candy. He eats it every day.”
Few have been worse taunted in sanctuary, and Robert felt that he could not bear more of this, that if the whispering continued, he must act and act with violence, let the consequent disaster be what it might
“Ole, dirty, horrable ole automobile grease!” the goading whisper said. “From automobiles' insides. He eats it. That's why he's so fat.”
Galled beyond all endurance, Robert turned about in his seat, and not satisfied with the intrinsic powers of his countenance to show forth denial with scorn, hatred and insult, he went to the utmost known to him, calling other members to aid his face in expressing his feelings. With his forefingers he pulled down the lower lids of his eyes, exposing fiery arcs not intended by Nature to be visible; with his thumbs he pulled up the corners of his mouth farther than would ordinarily be thought possible; and he completed this furious sketch by all the distortions of which his nose, forehead and gifted ears were capable.
Daisy squealed
“Ee-ee-ee-yi!”
This squeal, though not nearly at the top of her voice, except in pitch, was audible to most of the people in that part of the church; there was a rustling of fabrics, and the Mears family were offered a view of many coldly inquiring faces.
“Hush!” Mrs. Mears said in a vehement whisper to Daisy.
But Daisy pointed at Robert. “He scared me,” she said. “He did it on purpose!”
“Hush!” her mother said imperatively.
“Well, he did!” Daisy whimpered, but Mrs. Mears closed both the episode and Daisy's mouth, temporarily, with a gloved hand.
Those of the congregation, in front, who had turned to look and disapprove, resumed their former positions, and among these were Muriel Eliot and her father and mother. They had observed nothing untoward on the part of their fat relative; for his demonstration had been little more than instantaneous; and so far as his family could see, he had but turned to look at Daisy, as they did, in wonder at her indecorum. Obviously he could not have touched her without kneeling upon the seat and leaning over the back of the pew, which they knew he had not done; and their unanimous conclusion was that Daisy had accused Robert in order to shift opprobrium from herself.
To the Mears family, of course, matters appeared in an opposite light, because Robert's too fanciful mask had been executed in the sight of all four of them; and it seemed plain that he did it out of sheerest wantonness. They regretted Daisy's penetrating outbreak, but found it comprehensible, reserving their indignant thoughts for the fat transgressor before them. Thus it befell that the Mears family sat churched in judgment upon the child of the Eliot family, and the Eliot family, likewise churched, sat in judgment upon the child of the Mears family.
In such a fashion and of no hotter beginnings, the troubles between innumerable Capulets and Montagues have begun in many a Verona; and the Romeo of the Mears family marked with a sinking heart how the color of annoyance ran high in his Juliet's cheek before him—though in truth she was neither a Juliet nor his. She had already told him that people could never escape from a likeness to their families; he feared she might be thinking of this now; and he worried about it inordinately, as any lover will, throughout the rest of the morning. Then, when the service was over and the congregation come out into the noon sunshine, he hurried to walk beside her, wondering nervously how she would receive him.
“Would you—ah—would you mind if I walked home with you?” he asked.
“You seem to be doing it,” she informed him. “I rather wonder that you care to put yourself in such a position.”
“Good gracious! What position?”
“I mean, in the position of asking to walk with a member of a family that one of your family did such a thing to, this morning,” she said. For although Muriel was pretty,—incredibly so, to people who met the others of her family first—she was a serious girl and at her most serious age.
“Well, but—” he said. “Well, but—”
“'But' what?” she asked impatiently as he paused.
“Well, but—it was our family that everybody stared at, don't you see?”
“Yes,” she said, “—until your sister pointed at Robert and put the blame on him. Then they shifted their attention.”
“Pshaw!” Renfrew exclaimed. “I don't suppose anyone thought anything of it—just children! Besides, I don't think many people heard what Daisy said.”
“You don't? My own opinion is that even Dr. Wyeth heard her in the pulpit. He looked at us!”
Renfrew laughed uneasily. “But it really amounted to nothing at all,” he protested. “What difference does it make?” And he proceeded to reply to himself with as much confidence as he could summon: “Why, absolutely no difference in the world!”
“You think not?” she said, looking at him as if she wondered where he kept his mind. “By the way, it seems to me that I hear your family talking to my family now.”
“In your imagination, you mean?” he asked in simple innocence.
“No,” she said, “not precisely in my imagination—on the sidewalk—behind us.”
With that, she halted; so did he; and both turned to look behind them, where a group of six persons was just dividing emphatically into two groups of three. Muriel's father and Renfrew's father appeared to be uncomfortable; Robert, held in hand by his mother, looked murderous—while Mrs. Mears and Mrs. Eliot were equally of a high color. Words of import had been exchanged; there was that unmistakable effervescence in the air.
Daisy, keeping near her mother for protection, hopped with excitement, and her gestures were spectacular. “He did try to hit me, Mamma!” she shouted. “Right as we were comin' out o' church! He did!”
To deny this charge, Master Eliot showed no concern—on the contrary: “Yes, an' I will, too!” he promised the whole world loudly. “If she gets me in trouble again like she tried to this morning, she'll find out what happens to her! I'll take an' I'll—”
“Hush!” his mother interrupted, adding unsmilingly to the Mears family: “I must say, though, that I think the poor child was rather tried.”
“I hope you mean our 'poor child' when you say that,” Mrs. Mears said with a laugh she intended to sound more amiable than it actually did. “We rather think it should be put that way.”
“No doubt!” Mrs. Eliot returned, and she bit her lip. “Be quiet, Robert,” she said to her son, who was trying to decrease the distance between himself and Daisy. “I think possibly we needn't discuss it any longer.”
“No, indeed! I think not,” Mrs. Mears agreed; whereupon she and her husband and her clinging and clamorous daughter crossed rather pointedly to the other side of the street.
”YOU see?” Muriel observed, moving on again. “Of course, you were perfectly right: a little thing like that makes 'absolutely no difference in the world!'”
“Why, you don't think your mother and my mother were angry, do you?”
“No, of course not! Not at all!”
“But they didn't sound angry,” he said. “They sounded all right. You don't think they were upset with each other or anything, do you?”
“What I think is just this,” she said: “I think if they 'sounded all right' to you, then you must have a very peculiar sense of hearing!”
“You mean they really—”
“Yes,” she said dryly.
He sighed—then brightened. “Well, it doesn't matter.”
“No?”
“No,” he said. “Not so long as you feel all right about it.”
At this, she gave him a stare from widening eyes, but said nothing.
“You—ah—you do feel all right about it, don't you?” he asked; but as her stern silence continued, he added timidly: “Or—or don't you?”
“Renfrew—” she said slowly, and in a tone of such severity that he sighed again.
“You do feel rather upset, then,” he said. “I was sort of afraid so.”
“Renfrew,” she repeated, in the same depressing voice, “I find it hard to talk to you sometimes, because you seem so utterly without the power to think.”
“I suppose so,” he meekly agreed. “I suppose I do seem that way—to a girl of your intellectual nature.”
“It's extraordinary to me,” she continued, “that you could reach your age—the very prime of your life—without ever showing any maturity of thought. I don't believe that you even know yourself.”
“Well—” he said, “I don't know.”
“You don't even know yourself, and a man at your age ought to know himself through and through; and he ought to know other people through and through, too—especially the people closest about him in everyday life. Have you ever read a single standard work on the psychology of the family?”
“Why, no, I don't believe so,” he admitted. “I didn't know there were any.”
“Then you'd better!”
“I'm afraid I understand what you mean,” he said. “You're getting ready to tell me again that I'm like my sister Daisy.”
“You can't help being like her. It's an inevitable thing You're sister and brother; and you have the same qualities.”
“But you aren't like Robert,” he urged. “Anyhow, you certainly don't look like him, Muriel. You don't look like any of your family. Indeed you don't!”
“Never mind what I look like!”
“I can't help minding it, Muriel,” he said pathetically. “By that I mean i can't help thinking about it.”
“That will do,” she said. “That's something I don't care to hear about.”
“Well, I can't help thinking about it.”
“Vou call it 'thinking?'”
“Well, it may not be exactly thinking,” he said earnestly, “but anyhow it seems like thinking to me, and I don't know how to tell it from thinking. I get up in the morning thinking about how you look, and I think about how you look pretty near all day, and I go to sleep at night thinking about how you look. Then I wake up the next morning thinking about how you look, and I spend most of the next day thinking about how you look, and I go to sleep that night, too, thinking about how you look. And the day after that, I get up again, thinking about how you—”
“Renfrew! Did you hear me say that would do?”
“Well,” he insisted, “I can't help it. I go to bed every night, thinking about how you—”
But she interrupted imperiously. “That's enough! Good heavens!”
“Well, anyhow,” he muttered, “I do.”
“Never mind, please!”
“And the next day,” he added, “it's just the same. I get up—”
“If you tell me that again,” she said, “I'll do what your family did a few minutes ago to mine. I'll go and walk on the other side of the street. I don't care to have you thinking how I look!”
“No,” said Renfrew despondently, “I know you don't. I know.”
“Particularly,” she said with emphasis, “—particularly not just when a member of your family has been making me and all of my family undesirably conspicuous—virtually disgracing us in the eyes of half the town!” And as her recollection of the annoyance freshened, “Oh!” she cried. “You say it didn't amount to anything, and was 'just children,' and all that; but I say it was atrocious to make people believe my poor little brother was annoying her—and in church!”
“Are you sure he didn't do anything to her?” Renfrew asked
“Certainly!”
He shook his head. “Well—”
“What do you mean by that, if you please, Renfrew Mears?”
“I guess you're right,” he said hastily, alarmed by the addition of his surname. “I guess he didn't.”
“You 'guess' he didn't!” she cried, with indignation. “You 'guess!'”
“Well, the way it looked to me,” Renfrew said apologetically, “it looked rather as if he made a face at her and scared her. At least, that was the way it looked to me, Muriel.”
“It did?” she said. “Well, it's true, when Daisy pointed at him, I never saw anyone who seemed more shocked and troubled than poor little Robert; and of course, if you call it 'making a face' when anybody looks shocked and troubled—”
“Oh, no,” Renfrew interrupted. “That was afterward. I don't mean he made a face at her after she squealed. I mean the one he made first, the one he made before she—”
“Are you charging that he made two?”
“No, but I think it was a face he made that frightened her.”
“Really, this is too bad,” Muriel said decisively. “I didn't think it of you: it's too petty.”
“I don't see—”
“As it happens,” she explained icily, “Robert didn't turn round to look at her until after she made that silly noise. I saw him myself. The poor boy was sitting all slumped down in his seat until your sister did that idiotic thing. I saw him when he turned, as we all did, naturally, to see what was the matter with her.”
“You saw him?”
“Yes, I did!”
THE picture of Robert making this historic turn was now a clear one in Muriel's mind; and since it was in her mind, she mistook it to be obviously in her memory. So she spoke with perfect conviction, would confidently have taken her oath upon it. “That's why it does seem so unspeakably petty of you to try to be inventing things to put the blame on my poor little brother! Oh, I mean it! Unspeakably petty!”
Renfrew was meek; he was worshipful, and he did get up thinking of her, and think of her pretty nearly all day. and go to bed thinking of her; and in all this the next day was as the day preceding it; yet he had some feeble remnants of spirit left in him. He bit his lip, suffered from indecision, then acted.
They had reached a corner. “Thank you for letting me come this far with you,” he said gently. “I go the other way here.” And lifting his straw hat without looking at her, he turned into the cross-street, disappearing at once from her sight.
She faced him. “Do you think it's very dignified for two grown people to be bickering over these absurd squabbles?”
Muriel's state of mind was at first one of overpowering surprise. For Renfrew had been a lover like a doormat; and she was accustomed to look for about that much self-assertion from him.
“Well!” she murmured. “Indeed? So!”
She walked on, but went slowly, so that a few moments later her family overtook her and she joined them. Robert was still going on, as people say, about his troubles; and a similar dwelling upon the same theme appeared to come from across the street, where walked the greater part of the Mears family. Shrill pipings from Daisy could be heard at intervals in that quarter.
“You just ever let me ketch her outside her yard!” Robert was insisting doggedly to his parents. “You'll see whether I will or not!”
“No,” his mother said. “You mustn't talk like that. You must never speak of striking a little girl.”
“Of course, he mustn't,” his father agreed, but added, grunting: “Don't know that I blame him very much, though.”
“There, Mamma!” Robert cried. “You hear what Papa says. He thinks it'd be all right if I—”
“No, no!” Mrs. Eliot checked him. “She's a very, very dreadful little girl, but you must be a little gentleman.”
“I'll show her if I am!” Robert returned darkly. “Just let me lay my hands on her once, an' she'll find out! When I get through with her, there wont be enough left for the umbertaker!”
“Hush!” said his mother. “Where do you hear such rough expressions?”
“There wont!” the morose boy promised. “Look what she did to me: she kep' tryin' to make me mad, whisperin' at me I et automobile grease to make me fat—an' then she squawked an' squalled an' yelled—an' then she pointed at me right before everybody an' said I scared her, an' all the time she was tryin' to get me mad! Well, I am mad, an' the first time she steps out her yard without her father an' mother with her, I'll show her!”
He continued the passionate oration, in spite of commands issued by both of his parents; and on the opposite side of the street Daisy as constantly exercised her high and penetrating voice—though there was this difference: she enjoyed the excitement, and strove in every way to make herself more and more the heroine-victim of a sensational brutality. She became distinctly audible to all the Eliots, particularly to the raving Robert.
“He scared me so I had to squeal!” she declared. “He did it on purpose; that's what he did! He did it on purpose!”
Unable to contain himself, Master Eliot made as if to charge across the street, but his father caught his elbow, and restrained him upon the outer edge of the sidewalk.
“I did not!” Robert shouted at Daisy struggling to release himself and go to her. “You say that again, an' I'll—”
“You did, too!” Daisy shouted in vindictive and instantaneous return. “You did it on purpose!”
Then both of them together violated in one joint action, so to speak, not only the customary laws of etiquette and good breeding, but the Sabbatical calm of the most conservative street in the town. Leaning each toward the other, from opposite curbs they assailed each other at the top of their lungs, in the same words and in the next instant:
“You hush up!”
Robert's father dragged him away immediately, but though the fat boy's arm was fettered, liberty was in his soul “I'll show you!” he bawled over his shoulder. “You just wait till I—”
“Didn't you hear me tell you to hush up?” Daisy squealed shrewishly; and out of habit, she added a threat peculiarly inappropriate under the circumstances “I'll tell your mother on you!”
”HERE! Here! Stop it!” her father commanded; and across the way Mr. Eliot was peremptory with his son in an identical manner. Hostilities were suspended; and not a little irritated by the consciousness of again being made conspicuous before many fellow church-members, who were likewise going homeward by that street, the two families went stiffly on, and reached their two dwelling-places at almost the same time; for as it happened, their houses faced each other. The Mears family disappeared indoors so did Mr. and Mrs. Eliot; but Robert remained in the large and shady yard, moodily scuffing the turf with the side of his polished shoe; and his sister waited near by, gravely regarding him.
“Robert,” she said, “you didn't make a face at Daisy, did you?”
“What?”
“You didn't make a face at Daisy, did you?”
He looked inquiring. “When?”
“In church. Did you, Robert?”
“You mean in church?” he asked.
“Yes. Did you?”
“You mean this morning?”
“Of course,” she said with a little impatience. “You didn't make a face at her to frighten her, did you?”
“I should say I didn't!” he replied speaking out freely. “Why, that ole Daisy Mears, you couldn't scare her—why, you couldn't scare her—well, you couldn't do it! She just squealed to make me mad!”
“Tell me, dear,” Muriel said, “tell me just exactly what happened.”
“Well, it was like this,” he said. “First she began whisperin' at me how I et automobile grease to make me fat, an' I never did a thing to her: she started it an' everything. An' then she was bein' so smart, I just kind of—well, I kind of looked around, an' she yelled and pointed at me an' said I did it. She better look out; that's all! If she ever steps outside that gate over there—”
“Wait!” Muriel interrupted. “You say you looked round, and then she made the noise. It wasn't that way, was it?”
“What?”
“You didn't even look round till after she squealed,” said Muriel. “I know you didn't, because I saw you; so you couldn't have made a face at her.”
Robert received this information with some complacency. “She'll see what happens for tellin' stories on me,” he said.
“And you're absolutely certain, aren't you, dear?”
“Certain what?”
“Certain you didn't do anything to frighten her.”
To this Robert replied without either equivoke or mental reservation, for he had long since made Daisy familiar with the distortion he had exhibited to her—nay, she had practiced it herself in his presence more than once. “I should say I was!” he said.
“I thought so!” And Muriel's angry color again mounted high as she observed a tall young gentleman entering the gate across the street. He lifted his hat, acknowledging that she was within sight, but he did not glance that way, and at once went into the house.
“Indeed!” she said to herself. “So!”
For she was furious with Renfrew now—not anything less than furious. A doormat lover always runs this danger when he shows spirit for the first time: his revolt naturally causes an astonishment close kin to alarm; and when alarm is not followed by laughter, it is nearly always followed by choler. To Muriel's way of thinking, this serf Renfrew had preceded his revolt by a fib so petty that it was ignoble. Then, being properly reproved for his ignominy, he tips his hat, forsooth, and walks off, leaving a lady alone upon the street, where she may be observed in the act of being publicly abandoned! Muriel went to her room much in the mood of her sore-souled brother—wishful for somebody just to wait: she'd show him!
OPPORTUNITY lagged through the noon hours and the earlier afternoon; and though she chafed, feeling that she could not postpone the doormat's lesson overnight and sleep well, four o'clock arrived without revenge. From three to four she sat in a wicker chair under a tree in the front yard, a position almost inevitably under the observation of the house opposite, and virtually invitational. During the past two months she had not once remained there for so long as ten minutes without bringing Renfrew hopefully hurrying across the street—no matter how she had treated him the day before. This afternoon he did not rise to the poisoned bait, but remained invisible somewhere in the depths; and the bait was the more poisonous on that account.
“Ver-ry well!” she said to herself. “And the whole Mears family probably thinking I'm sitting out here hoping he'll come over so I can be nice to him!”
Rising, she went languidly and gracefully into the house, and hurrying to her own room upstairs, disposed herself upon a couch with a book, which she did not read. Discovering that she was not reading it, she tossed it aside so carelessly that it struck the wall; after which, she looked straight upward as if she cared as little for the ceiling as she did for the book. Reclining she was, but no one would have thought her to be reposing; her fingers were intertwined with stress; and beyond her crossed ankles, one foot kept ceaselessly in motion, describing a violent little arc. She spoke aloud: “I never did!” she said. “In all my life I never knew anything like it!”
By this she meant both the baseness and the vicious audacity of Renfrew Mears. Never had she dreamed he was either so tricky or so truculent.
Then, as she lay upon her pretty couch, there came through the open window the sound of children at play across the street, and one of the voices was the hated voice of little Daisy. With Daisy were her two most intimate friends and enemies, little Elsie Threamer, nine, and Master Laurence Coy, another twin in age. In the Sunday stillness of the bright after noon Muriel could hear them distinctly; they were playing “I-Spy,” and became so noisy in the game that they had to be warned. Muriel heard Mrs. Mears calling to them to remember what day it was. “And please play some nice, quiet Sunday game instead, children.”
After that, the voices were less strident and though Muriel still heard them at intervals, and frowned when she did, her attention wandered from them; she forgot them for a time.
In fact, Daisy and her two companions, in order to subdue themselves as requested, had fallen back upon that pacific contest of wits known to them as, “Button—button who's-got-the-button?” They played at it resignedly for fifteen minutes; but it was not man's work, and Master Coy, after frequently expressing his repulsion, declined to proceed.
“Well, we might as well play it as anything else,” Daisy said.
“Well, I wont play ole Button any more,” he returned frankly. “It makes me sick. Three can't play it any good, and that's all there is.”
“I tell you what we could do,” Elsie suggested. “We could easy enough get four. Le's get Robert Eliot to come over He's awful fat an' everything, but it'd be more fun playin' Button with four. Le's see if he's home.”
BUT at the mention of Robert, Daisy had assumed the look of a prim person deeply shocked. “Oh, no,” she said “We can't have him.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Daisy replied, simply and conclusively, “he's bad.”
At this both Elsie and Laurence looked gravely interested. “When was he?” Laurence asked.
“I guess you wouldn't ask when, if you went to our church!” Daisy exclaimed importantly.
“What'd he do?”
“Well, I guess you wouldn't ask what, if you went to our church!”
“Was it in church?”
“Yes, it was. Right in church!”
“Was it today?” Elsie asked.
“Yes, it was,” Daisy said, and she added, as if the date of the deed completed the sacrilege: “Right this morning!”
“Was he very bad?” Elsie asked.
“Yes, he was.”
“Well,” Elsie said, “was he awful bad?”
“Yes, he was.”
“Did he tell a story in church?” Laurence inquired.
“He was bad!” Daisy said.
“Did his mother find it out?”
“Yes, she did, and his father too.”
Laurence's expression changed from grave to solemn, at this. “What they goin' do to him?” he asked.
“He behaved terrable,” said Daisy. “An' I bet I know where he'll go when he dies, for doin' it in a church!” In this conviction. she was wholly sincere—the memory of what she herself did in a church having become blurred, for after Robert's attempt at reprisal, only one side of the episode presented itself to her naturally biased mind, and she now genuinely believed that his conduct had been monstrous from the start—monstrous without provocation. “He better look out!” she added. “He'll see Who'll come for him when he dies!”
“Did they say they were goin' to whip him?” Laurence asked.
“Look!” Elsie whispered. “There he is now, over in his yard. He looks like he's thinkin' about somep'm like that.”
SHE was so far right that at least Robert was of a brooding aspect, as he slowly came into view from behind the Eliots' house. He frowned, kept his hands in his pockets and his eyes upon the ground; but he may have realized that he was the subject of comment across the way, for the three children there were conspicuously staring at him over the Mears' hedge. He halted, leaned against the trunk of a tree, and slowly scuffed the grass with his shoe.
“Look how he's got his underlip stickin' out,” Laurence said. “I guess he got one!”
“Ole fat thing!” Daisy said.
Robert heard her, and his bitterness stirred him to act. “Who you callin' 'ole fat thing'?” he shouted, moving toward his gate.
“You! That's who!” Daisy returned vindictively.
At this, Robert ran fiercely across the street. “I got you now!” he shouted. “I'll show you what you get!”
The lady so ungallantly threatened might have been expected to show some alarm; on the contrary, she stood her ground. “Yes, you will!” she retorted: and Robert came to a halt on the other side of the low hedge. “Come on in: you're going to do so much!” she taunted him.
He frowned more portentously, breathed heavily, increased the protrusion of his underlip. “Yes,” he said. “Get me inside your yard, an' then call your ole father an' mother! You just take a few steps outside that gate, an' you'll see what I'll do to you!”
“Poot!” she retorted airily. “You think we're scared o' you, you ole fat thing, you!” And she went promptly to the gate. “Come on,” she said to her two guests. “We'll show him how much we're scared of him!”
Laurence followed her, for somehow his own honor appeared to be involved in showing that he was not afraid to go out upon the sidewalk; and he failed to perceive that not Robert, but Daisy, had thus involved it. Elsie remained in the yard, and became a spectator by means of this simple passivity, which Laurence did not know how to imitate. He was uncomfortable; his feeling for Daisy was far from being one of partiality; yet without understanding how such a thing came about, he found himself constituted her partisan in a quarrel of the most threatening portent.
“I an' Laurence'll show you,” Daisy said as they came out of the gate. “Now, what you goin' to do so much?”
MASTER ELIOT'S frown was maintained in all its ominousness; nevertheless his expression showed the dawn of uncertainty, and he gave ground slowly as they approached.
“Go on! Do somep'm!” the taunting Daisy urged him. “You dared us out here; whyn't you go ahead?”
“Well, I would,” he returned. “I would if they wasn't two of you. Course you haf an' bring your crowd with you!”
“Oh, poot! I thought you were goin' to do so much!”
“Well, I will, too,” he said. “I will, if you don't look out.” He swallowed. “If it wasn't for one thing, I would.”
“Yes, you would!”
1 would!” he said fiercely. “I would if it wasn't Sunday!”
Daisy pointed at him. “Oh, what a story! Look what you tried to do when we was comin' out o' church!”
“Well, I'll do it again,” he said, moving backward toward the street. “I'd do it right this minute if it wasn't Sunday!”
She jeered loudly. “It's because you're afraid o' Laurence! Laurence is littler than you, an' you're afraid of him! You're twice as big as he is, an' you're afraid of him!”
“I am not!”
“You are, too!”
“I wouldn't be afraid of him,” Robert declared passionately. “I wouldn't be afraid of him if I had one hand tied behind me!”
“You would!”
“I wouldn't if I had both hands tied behind me!”
Now, at this, the rather perplexed Laurence began to feel more spiritedly a partisan, and he was stung to a retort.
“I'll show you whether you would or not!” he said. And Daisy clapped her hands.
“That's the way to talk to him!” she cried. “He better run home an' cry-baby to his mamma if he don't want to get hurt!” Then, shaking her finger at Robert, she warned him: “Yes, you better! You better get back in your own yard, or little Laurence Coy'll show you whether he's afraid of you or not! You'll find out whether you can fight him with both hands tied behind your back!”
Laurence corroborated this. “Yes, I will!”
Robert had moved steadily backward till he was now well across the street, with the vindictive Daisy and her involuntary henchman following him irregularly, but constantly. They reached the curbstone on Robert's own side of the street: and there he began to feel the inspiration of the home grounds. “You look out, now, you ole Laurence Coy you!” he said.
“Don't you be afraid, Laurence,” Daisy encouraged her friend. “You pretty near chased him home already. He's fearful scared of you!”
“Look out, now!” Robert repeated dangerously, for Laurence's small chest was almost touching his. “You know what I did to you last time!”
“I put it all over you,” said Laurence. “An' I'll do it again!”
Robert could bear no more. He pushed Laurence heartily; Laurence pushed him in return; they grappled and round them danced the Valkyr cheering her champion on, and even assisting him materially.
“You got him now, Laurence!” she shrieked. “Squeeze him! Squeeze him harder! I'll grab his leg as soon as he quits kickin' an' I can get hold of it then we'll show him! Squeeze him!”
But hers was not the only vociferation audible: adults were stirring. From an open window on the ground floor of one of the opposing houses a young man leaped, shouting, “Stop that!” and hurrying toward the combat; and from the front door of the other house, a pretty and agitated lady came running and calling loudly. She seized upon Robert, who was unwilling to be detached from Laurence; and Renfrew seized upon Laurence and Daisy, who were unwilling to be detached from Robert. All three first promised that upon another occasion they would show what they would do and then began to explain, together, just what had happened and what brought it about. Heaven's good air was crowded with gesticulations and shrill sounds
“Hush!” Renfrew shouted, using all of his voice. “Great Scott! Go home! Go home, Daisy, this instant! Do you hear me?”
Still clamorous, she went, and Laurence went with her, very truculent. They rejoined the more prudent Elsie and then resumed the discussion of Robert's character.
RENFREW, without more ado, turned to follow them, but the agitated lady addressed him sharply. “Renfrew Mears!”
“Yes?”
“Will you come into the yard a moment, please? I shall only keep you for an instant.” Then, turning to her brother, she said sternly: “Shame! Go straight into the house!” And as Robert morosely obeyed, she followed him through the gate, and Renfrew went with her.
“I thought you might have something to say to me,” she said, much in the tone she had just used to Robert.
“Why—no,” he returned quietly. “No, I believe not.”
“I mean something you might feel you ought to say to me.”
“Why—no,” he repeated. “No, I believe not.”
“No apology?”
“What for?”
“For leaving me as you did, this morning—with everybody on the street looking on.”
“If they noticed it,” he said, “they'd only have thought I had an errand in the other direction.”
She looked at him marvelingly. “And do you still maintain that Robert made a face at your sister?”
“Yes, he did.”
“What about just now?” she asked. “What about her coming over to our side of the street and bringing a boy to attack him?”
“Robert came over to our side of the street first, to attack her,” Renfrew said. “If you'd been noticing—”
“I was,” Muriel interrupted sharply. “Your sister began it by calling out and goading him. That's why he went over. What have you to say about that?”
“Why, nothing,” he said, and moved toward the gate.
“Stop!” she bade him. “I have something more to say to you. I—”
She was interrupted by shouts from the recent combatants across the street; they were pointing at an upstairs window of her own house and calling that it was well for Robert that he had gone indoors.
“You better look out!” Daisy informed this window, at a shriek. “That's what you did in church this morning, an' you better think Who'll come for you when you die!”
“WHAT in the world—” Muriel began, and glancing upward, she had just a glimpse of Robert before he hastily retired. He had applied his forefingers to his lower eyelids, and his thumbs to his mouth.
“What a dreadful—face!” Muriel gasped involuntarily.
“Yes,” said Renfrew. “That was the one I—”
He stopped; for suddenly putting her hand to her cheek, she walked away from him, but she did not go into the house. Instead she went deeper into the yard.
“Come here,” she said, not turning.
“Is there anything more?” he said, following inquiringly.
“Yes, there is.”
“Well, what—”
“It's this.” She turned and faced him, frowning. “Do you think it's very dignified for two grown people to be bickering over these trifles—over these absurd squabbles of children?”
“No, I don't.”
“Well, then.” she said, “why do you bicker about them so?”
“Do I?” he asked; and his face showed a troubled perplexity. “Do I?”
“Why do you take such things so seriously?”
“Well—” Honest Renfrew's perplexity deepened. “Well—I— But, I didn't think I did. Do I?”
Upon this she stepped closer to him, and the lovely color came high in her cheeks. “No!” she cried. “I mean why do you let me?”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1946, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 77 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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