across the fence from next door, as he reached fancied
sanctuary in his own backyard:

"Kiss me some _more_, darling little boy!"

This worm, established upon the fence opposite the conservatory
windows, and in direct view from the table in the dining-room,
shrieked the accursed request at short intervals throughout the
luncheon hour. The humour of childhood is sometimes almost
intrusive.

And now began a life for Hedrick which may be rather painfully but
truthfully likened to a prolongation of the experiences of a rat
that finds itself in the middle of a crowded street in daylight:
there is plenty of excitement but no pleasure. He was pursued,
harried, hounded from early morning till nightfall, and even in
his bed would hear shrill shouts go down the sidewalk from the
throats of juvenile fly-by-nights: "Oh dar-ling lit-oh darling
lit-oh _lit_-le boy, _lit_-le boy, kiss me some _more_!" And one
day he overheard a remark which strengthened his growing
conviction that the cataclysm had affected the whole United
States: it was a teacher who spoke, explaining to another a
disturbance in the hall of the school. She said, behind her hand:

"_He kissed an idiot_."

Laura had not even remotely foreseen the consequences of her
revelation, nor, indeed, did she now properly estimate their
effect upon Hedrick. She and her mother were both sorry for him,
and did what they could to alleviate his misfortunes, but there
was an inevitable remnant of amusement in their sympathy. Youth,
at war, affects stoicism but not resignation: in truth,
resignation was not much in Hedrick's line, and it would be far
from the fact to say that he was softened by his sufferings. He
brooded profoundly and his brightest thought was revenge. It was
not upon Cora that his chief bitterness turned. Cora had always
been the constant, open enemy: warfare between them was a regular
condition of life; and unconsciously, and without "thinking it
out," he recognized the naturalness of her seizing upon the
deadliest weapon against him that came to her hand. There was
nothing unexpected in that: no, the treachery, to his mind, lay in
the act of Laura, that non-combatant, who had furnished the
natural and habitual enemy with this scourge. At all times, and
with or without cause, he ever stood ready to do anything possible
for the reduction of Cora's cockiness, but now it was for the
taking-down of Laura and the repayment of her uncalled-for and
overwhelming