Miss Amy yawned, and smiled on him with slow powerful affectionate contempt.
“Go on!” she said, in her broad, lazy accent. “I don’t want to fool with you any more. You’re not worth powder enough to blow you up.”
Margaret came in, her face furrowed deeply between smoke-dark eyes, full of tender sternness and hidden laughter.
“What’s wrong with the rascal?” she asked. “Can’t he learn algebra?”
“He can learn!” drawled Miss Amy. “He can learn anything. He’s lazy—that’s what it is. Just plain lazy.”
She smacked his buttock smartly with a ruler.
“I’d like to warm you a bit with this,” she laughed, slowly and richly. “You’d learn then.”
“Here!” said Margaret, shaking her head in protest. “You leave that boy alone. Don’t look behind the faun’s ears. Never mind about algebra, here. That’s for poor folks. There’s no need for algebra where two and two make five.”
Miss Amy turned her handsome gypsy eyes on Eugene.
“Go on. I’ve seen enough of you.” She made a strong weary gesture of dismissal.
Hatless, with a mad whoop, he plunged through the door and leaped the porch rail.
“Here, boy!” Margaret called. “Where’s your hat?”
Grinning, he galloped back, picked up a limp rag of dirty green felt, and pulled it over his chaotic hair. Curly tufts stuck through the gaping crease-holes.
“Come here!” said Margaret gravely. Her nervous fingers pulled his frayed necktie around to the front, tugged down his vest, and buttoned his coat over tightly, while he peered at her with his strange devil’s grin. Suddenly she trembled with laughter.
“Good heavens, Amy,” she said. “Look at that hat.”
Miss Amy smiled at him with indifferent sleepy cat-warmth.
“You want to fix yourself up,’Gene,” she said, “so the girls will begin to notice you.”
He heard the strange song of Margaret’s laughter.
“Can you see him out courting?” she said. “The poor girl would think she had a demon lover, sure.”
