He leaned back in his chair once more, desisting at last, for there had begun to be an unmistakable prospect of losing his audience. Andy Longwood, who had wished to go earlier, but had found his will not adequate to the emergency, remaining helplessly embarrassed by the awkwardness of the situation which left him an unwelcome witness of the manifestation of Eli Strobe’s mania, now felt the energy of his own grievances imparted to his volition by the disclosures which had chanced to be made. He was once more self-absorbed, self-centred. He hardly noticed the wounded man, or that he rose so precipitately upon the conclusion of the last sentence that it savored of the rudeness of interruption and disrespect to his elders. He could go now, easily enough,—willingly. His face, as he stood, younger far than his muscles, callow of expression considering his height, belying his claim to the authority and respect that he arrogated as a full-grown man, was flushed, and wore that petulant importance of adolescence that falls far short of the dignity for which it strives. Marcella knew well the puerile heroics and reproaches that would have come from him had they been alone; and so much his senior was the girl, four years his junior, that she was wont to slyly laugh at him, to maternally humor his view of his own importance, and to feel very kindly toward him, for they had always been together, and he had been a merry and good-tempered play-mate in the old days. He had not yet ceased to be amusing, save, poor fellow, to himself. “I mus’ be a-goin’,” he observed, not lifting his eyes, and articulating indistinctly, for he only slightly moved his lips. She had often seen him in this mood, and ten years ago these manifestations, so familiar to her, would have preceded a wild burst of tears and a stamping of small brogans in rage. She remembered him well in this guise of youthful grief. Such seizures had passed from his recollection as if they had never been. He could not have pictured himself at any period so removed from that idea of dignified and important identity which he fancied was himself. “We air goin’ ter dish up dinner, Andy,” she observed, alluringly. “Some o’ the late corn ain’t plumb hardened yit, an’ we air goin’ ter hev corn-puddin’. Them guinea hens ye gin me lays aigs enough fur ennythin’. Ye better stay.” Few people in this world have the opportunity of beholding a fairer, more gracious face than that which she turned, as she bent over her wheel, and looked at him, her eyes shining and sweet, her lips smiling, showing the glittering line of her teeth. But he kept his eyes averted. “I don’t want no dinner,” he declared.