The sarcasm of this verse was more than I could stand.  And it made Pepper Whitcomb pretty mad to be called Cock Robin, I can tell you!

So the days glided on, with fewer clouds and more sunshine than fall to the lot of most boys.  Conway was certainly a cloud.  Within school-bounds he seldom ventured to be aggressive; but whenever we met about town he never failed to brush against me, or pull my cap over my eyes, or drive me distracted by inquiring after my family in New Orleans, always alluding to them as highly respectable colored people.

Jack Harris was right when he said Conway would give me no rest until I fought him.  I felt it was ordained ages before our birth that we should meet on this planet and fight.  With the view of not running counter to destiny, I quietly prepared myself for the impending conflict.  The scene of my dramatic triumphs was turned into a gymnasium for this purpose, though I did not openly avow the fact to the boys.  By persistently standing on my head, raising heavy weights, and going hand over hand up a ladder, I developed my muscle until my little body was as tough as a hickory knot and as supple as tripe.  I also took occasional lessons in the noble art of self-defence, under the tuition of Phil Adams.

I brooded over the matter until the idea of fighting Conway became a part of me.  I fought him in imagination during school-hours; I dreamed of fighting with him at night, when he would suddenly expand into a giant twelve feet high, and then as suddenly shrink into a pygmy so small that I couldn’t hit him.  In this latter shape he would get into my hair, or pop into my waistcoat-pocket, treating me with as little ceremony as the Liliputians showed Captain Lemuel Gulliver—­all of which was not pleasant, to be sure.  On the whole, Conway was a cloud.

And then I had a cloud at home.  It was not Grandfather Nutter, nor Miss Abigail, nor Kitty Collins, though they all helped to compose it.  It was a vague, funereal, impalpable something which no amount of gymnastic training would enable me to knock over.  It was Sunday.  If ever I have a boy to bring up in the way he should go, I intend to make Sunday a cheerful day to him.  Sunday was not a cheerful day at the Nutter House.  You shall judge for yourself.

It is Sunday morning.  I should premise by saying that the deep gloom which has settled over everything set in like a heavy fog early on Saturday evening.

At seven o’clock my grandfather comes smilelessly downstairs.  He is dressed in black, and looks as if he had lost all his friends during the night.  Miss Abigail, also in black, looks as if she were prepared to bury them, and not indisposed to enjoy the ceremony.  Even Kitty Collins has caught the contagious gloom, as I perceive when she brings in the coffee-urn—­a solemn and sculpturesque urn at any time, but monumental now—­and sets it down in front of Miss Abigail.  Miss Abigail gazes at the urn as if it held the ashes of her ancestors, instead of a generous quantity of fine old Java coffee.  The meal progresses in silence.