when he was spoken to. He turned his back on his family and on Booty. He
impressed them with his absolute and perfect disapproval.

For, as the Headache worked in Mr. Ransome, all young and gay and
innocent things became abominable to him. Especially young things with
spirits and appetites like his son Randall and Fred Booty. This
afternoon they inspired him with a peculiar loathing and disgust. So did
the malignant cheerfulness maintained by his wife. Escape no doubt was
open to him. He might have left the room and sat by himself in the back
parlor. But he spared them this humiliation. Outraged as he was, he
would not go to the extreme length of forsaking them. He was a good man;
and, as a good man, he would not be separated from his family, though he
loathed it. So he hung about the room where they were; he brooded over
it; he filled it with the spirit of the Headache. Young Booty became so
infected, so poisoned with this presence that his nervous system
suffered, and he all but choked over his tea. Young Booty, with his
humor and his wit, the joy of Poly. Ramblers, sat in silence, miserably
blushing, crumbling with agitated fingers the cake he dared not eat, and
all the time trying not to look at Ranny.

For if he looked at Ranny he would be done for; he would not be able to
contain himself, beholding how Ranny stuck it, and what he made of it,
that intolerable, that incredible Sunday afternoon; how he saw it
through; how he got back on it and found in it his own. For, as Mr.
Ransome went from gloom to gloom, Ranny's spirit soared, indomitable,
and his merriment rose in him, wave on wave.

What he could make of it Booty saw in an instant when Mr. Ransome left
the room at the summons of the shop-bell. Ranny, with a smile of
positive affection, watched him as he went.

"Queer old percher, ain't he?" Ranny said.

Then he let himself go, addressing himself to Booty.

"The old Porcupine may seem to you a trifle melancholy and morose. You
can't see what's goin' on in his mind. You've no ideer of the glee he
bottles up inside himself. Fair bubblin' and sparklin' in him, it is.
Some day he'll bust out with it. I shouldn't be surprised if, at any
moment now, he was to break out into song."

Booty, very hot and uncomfortable under Mrs. Ransome's eyes, affected to
reprove him. "You dry up, you young rotter. Jolly lot of bottlin' up
there is about you."

But there was that in Ranny which seemed as if it would never dry