The ice-wagon man was peeved, as he had a right to be, and may of been going to talk back, but when he saw the rest of us getting Shelley he yelled to the man in the front to drive on.  It was too late, quick as he went, to save the fair repute of himself and family, if Shelley’s words was to be took seriously.  Shelley had invaded the most sacred relationship and pretended to bare a hideous scandal.  Also the iceman himself couldn’t possibly of done half the things Shelley hotly urged him to do.

Us people that had seemed to linger walked right on, not meeting each other’s eye, and Shelley again become the angel child, turning in at his gate and walking up the path in a decorous manner with his schoolbooks under his arm.  I first wondered if I shouldn’t go warn Arline that her child had picked up some words that would get him nowhere at all with his doting pastor.  Little could the fond woman dream, when she tucked him in after his prayers at night, that talk such as this could come from his sweet young lips.  How much mothers think they know of their sons and how darned little they do know!  But I decided to keep out of it, remembering that no mother in the world’s history had ever thanked a person for anything but praise of her children.

Still, I couldn’t help but worry about Shelley’s future, both here and hereafter.  But I talked to other people about it and learned that he was already known as a public character to everyone but his own dear mother.  It was these here curls that got him attacked on every hand by young and old, and his natural vigour of mind had built him up a line of repartee that was downright blistering when he had time to stop and recite it all.  Even mule skinners would drive blocks out of their way just to hear little Shelley’s words when someone called him sissy or girl-boy.

It seems Shelley never took any of these troubles to his mother, because he was right manly and he regarded curls as a natural infirmity that couldn’t be helped and that his poor ma shouldn’t be blamed for.  He’d always had curls, just as other unfortunates had been disfigured or maimed from birth, so he’d took it as a cross the Lord had give him to bear.  And he was willing to bear it in silence if folks would just let him alone.  Otherwise, not.  Oh, most surely not!

I kind of kept watch on Shelley’s mad career after that.  It was mad most of the time.  He had already begun to fight as well as to use language, and by the time he was ten he was a very nasty scrapper.  And ready—­it soon got so that only boys new-come to town would taunt him about his golden locks.  And unless they was too much out of Shelley’s class he made believers of ’em swiftly.  From ten to twelve he must of had at least one good fight a day, what with the new ones and the old ones that still couldn’t believe a boy in velvet pants with curls on his shoulders could really put it over on ’em.  His mother believed his clothes was tore and his face bunged up now and then in mere boyish sports, and begged him not to engage in such rough games with his childish playmates.  And Shelley, the little man, let her talk on, still believing he was like little Paul McNamara, that had a crooked foot.  He wasn’t going to shame his mother as well as himself.