“You did eat some, the other day,” said Jane.  “You ate a whole lot.  You eat it every chance you get!”

“You hush up!” he shouted, and returned to his description of the outrage.  “She kept following us!  She followed us, hollering, ‘will—­ee!’ till it’s a wonder we didn’t go deaf!  And just look at her!  I don’t see how you can stand it to have her going around like that and people knowing it’s your child!  Why, she hasn’t got enough on!”

Mrs. Baxter laughed.  “Oh, for this very hot weather, I really don’t think people notice or care much about—­”

“’Notice’!” he wailed.  “I guess Miss Pratt noticed!  Hot weather’s no excuse for—­for outright obesity!” (As Jane was thin, it is probable that William had mistaken the meaning of this word.) “Why, half o’ what she has got on has come unfastened—­especially that frightful thing hanging around her leg—­and look at her back, I just beg you!  I ask you to look at her back.  You can see her spinal cord!”

“Column,” Mrs. Baxter corrected.  “Spinal column, Willie.”

“What do I care which it is?” he fumed.  “People aren’t supposed to go around with it exposed, whichever it is!  And with apple sauce on their ears!”

“There is not!” Jane protested, and at the moment when she spoke she was right.  Naturally, however, she lifted her hands to the accused ears, and the unfortunate result was to justify William’s statement.

“Look!” he cried.  “I just ask you to look!  Think of it:  that’s the sight I have to meet when I’m out walking with Miss Pratt!  She asked me who it was, and I wish you’d seen her face.  She wanted to know who ’that curious child’ was, and I’m glad you didn’t hear the way she said it.  ‘Who is that curious child?’ she said, and I had to tell her it was my sister.  I had to tell Miss Pratt it was my only sister!”

“Willie, who is Miss Pratt?” asked Mrs. Baxter, mildly.  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of—­”

Jane had returned to an admirable imperturbability, but she chose this moment to interrupt her mother, and her own eating, with remarks delivered in a tone void of emphasis or expression.

“Willie’s mashed on her,” she said, casually.  “And she wears false side-curls.  One almost came off.”

At this unspeakable desecration William’s face was that of a high priest stricken at the altar.

“She’s visitin’ Miss May Parcher,” added the deadly Jane.  “But the Parchers are awful tired of her.  They wish she’d go home, but they don’t like to tell her so.”

One after another these insults from the canaille fell upon the ears of William.  That slanders so atrocious could soil the universal air seemed unthinkable.

He became icily calm.

“Now if you don’t punish her,” he said, deliberately, “it’s because you have lost your sense of duty!”