Hot fury choked him, passed before his vision in a blinding flood. He ground his teeth, rocked gently back and forth, and said in a small, stopped voice:
“Oh, so he told you, did he? He had to come whining to you about it, did he? The damned little… !”
“He told us nothing,” she said curtly. “Frank’s not that kind; he doesn’t whine. Only, we couldn’t help noticing a lump on the back of his head the size of a goose egg, and it didn’t take me long to figure out the rest.” She turned and looked at him with a straight, unrelenting stare, and then said harshly:
“It was a wonderful thing to do, wasn’t it? I suppose you think that settles everything. You can be proud of yourself now, can’t you?”
The thin fine blade of cruel jealousy pierced him suddenly and was twisted in his heart. In a voice trembling with all the sweltering anguish and defeat that packed his overladen heart, he sneered in bitter parody:
“Come now, Frankie, dear!—Did bad naughty mans crack little Frankie’s precious head?—There, there, dearie!—Mamma kiss and make it well… let nice big nursey-worsey kiss-um and make-um well!—Next time Frankie-pankie goes for a walk, big Boston nursey Ann will go wiv-ems, won’t she, pet, to see that wuff, wuff man leave poor little Frankie be.”
She reddened angrily, and said:
“No one’s trying to be Frankie’s nurse. He doesn’t need it, and he doesn’t want it. Only, I think it’s a rotten shame that a big hulking lout like you should have no more decency than to maul around as fine a person as Frank is. You ought to be ashamed of yourself; it was a rotten thing to do!”
“Why, you bitch!” he said slowly, in a low, strangled tone. “You nice, neat, eighteen-carat jewel of a snobby Boston bitch!—Go back to Boston where you came from!” he snarled. “That’s where you belong; that’s all you’re worth…. So I’m a big, hulking lout, am I? And that damned little affected æsthete’s the finest person that you ever knew!—Why, God-damn the lot of you for the cheap, lying, fakey Boston bitches that you are!—with your’he’s a swell person, he really is, you know,’—'Oh, grand! Oh, swell! Oh, fine!'” he jeered incoherently. “Why, damn you, who do you think you are, anyway?—that you think I’m going to stand for any more of your snobby Boston backwash!—So I’m a big, hulking lout, am I?”—the words rankled bitterly in his memory. “And dear, darling little Francis is too fine, too fine—oh, dearie me, now, yes—to have his precious little
