is Henry
Rooter._"

Florence stood close to the pink-shaded electric drop-light over her
small white dressing-table, reading again and again these pathetically
honest little confidences. Her eyelids were withdrawn to an
unprecedented retirement, so remarkably she stared; while her mouth
seemed to prepare itself for the attempted reception of a bulk beyond
its capacity. And these plastic tokens, so immoderate as to be
ordinarily the consequence of nothing short of horror, were overlaid by
others, subtler and more gleaming, which wrought the true significance
of the contortion--a joy that was dumfounding.

Her thoughts were first of Fortune's kindness in selecting her for a
favour so miraculously dovetailing into the precise need of her life;
then she considered Henry and Herbert, each at this hour probably
brushing his hair in preparation for the Sunday evening meal, and both
touchingly unconscious of the calamity now befalling them; but what
eventually engrossed her mind was a thought about Wallie Torbin.

This Master Torbin, fourteen years of age, was in all the town the boy
most dreaded by his fellow-boys, and also by girls, including many of
both sexes who knew him only by sight--and hearing. He had no physical
endowment or attainment worth mention; but boys who could "whip him with
one hand" became sycophants in his presence; the terror he inspired was
moral. He had a special over-development of a faculty exercised clumsily
enough by most human beings, especially in their youth; in other words,
he had a genius--not, however, a genius having to do with anything
generally recognized as art or science. True, if he had been a violinist
prodigy or mathematical prodigy, he would have had some respect from his
fellows--about equal to that he might have received if he were gifted
with some pleasant deformity, such as six toes on a foot--but he would
never have enjoyed such deadly prestige as had actually come to be his.
In brief, then, Wallie Torbin had a genius for mockery.

Almost from his babyhood he had been a child of one purpose: to increase
by burlesques the sufferings of unfortunate friends. If one of them
wept, Wallie incessantly pursued him, yelping in horrid mimicry; if one
were chastised he could not appear out-of-doors for days except to
encounter Wallie and a complete rehearsal of the recent agony. "Quit,
Papa! _Pah_-puh, quee-yet! I'll _never_ do it again, Pah-puh! Oh,
_lemme_ alone, Pah-_puh_!"

As he