“Well, I finished my supper without sayin’ a word to her, and she didn’t say a word to me, and then I got up and went back into the settin’ room and picked up the paper and commenced readin’ again. In a minute she come along through with the kid and took him into the bedroom to put him to bed. After she’d been in there a while she came out and shut the door, and stood up for a minute lookin’ over toward me. I thought she was waitin’ for me to speak, so I just kept my eyes on the paper like as if I was readin’, but I wa’n’t. I hadn’t cooled off a great deal since she poured the water on the steak, and could see that she hadn’t neither, so I thought mebbe it was as well to have it out, but I was goin’ to wait for her to begin. Of course, I hadn’t no idea then of doin’ anything like what I did. I was just mad and reckless and didn’t care much, and would keep thinkin’ of the steak, and you know all the time I was thinkin’ I could feel a kind of prickin’ up in my head, as if a lot of needles was runnin’ up toward my hair. I s’pose it was the blood runnin’ up there. That feller that I told you about that was talkin’ to us over here kind of made out that a man was a good deal like a machine, or an engine of some kind, and when the steam was turned on he had to go. He said that if the blood was pumped up in the head it made us do things; it made some people write poetry, and some make speeches, and some sing, and some fight, and some kill folks, and they couldn’t really help it if they was made that way and the blood got pumped up in the head. I believe there’s a good deal in it. You know when the blood don’t circulate down in your feet they get cold and kind of dead, and then if you put ‘em into a pail of hot water or even cold water, and then rub ‘em hard with a towel, they get prickly and red, and you can feel the blood comin’ back to ‘em and feel ‘em wake up again. “Well, I set perfectly still while she stood by the mantel-piece. First she picked up one thing and then another and kind of dusted ‘em and put ‘em back. She done this till she had dusted ever’thing on the mantel-piece, and all the time she would be lookin’ over toward me, but I kept my eyes down on the paper and pretended to be readin’. I knew that she didn’t dust the things because she wanted to dust, for she always dusted in the mornin’ just after she swept. I knew she did it because she was nervous and mad, and was waitin’ for me to begin. Of course, sometimes when you are mad the longer you wait the more you get over it, and then sometimes the longer you wait the madder you get. It’s like a boiler not usin’ any of its steam while the fire is goin’; if it waits long enough somethin’s got to happen.