Not a sign from Tracy, whose head was drooping again.  What supernatural self-possession!  Sally fixed her eye on him and began again, resolved to blast him out of his serenity this time if she knew how to apply the dynamite that is concealed in certain forms of words when those words are properly loaded with unexpected meanings.

“And next it goes on and on and on about the eldest son—­not the favorite, this one—­and how he is neglected in his poor barren boyhood, and allowed to grow up unschooled, ignorant, coarse, vulgar, the comrade of the community’s scum, and become in his completed manhood a rude, profane, dissipated ruffian—­”

That head still drooped!  Sally rose, moved softly and solemnly a step or two, and stood before Tracy—­his head came slowly up, his meek eyes met her intense ones—­then she finished with deep impressiveness—­

“—­named Spinal Meningitis Snodgrass!”

Tracy merely exhibited signs of increased fatigue.  The girl was outraged by this iron indifference and callousness, and cried out—­

“What are you made of?”

“I?  Why?”

“Haven’t you any sensitiveness?  Don’t these things touch any poor remnant of delicate feeling in you?”

“N—­no,” he said wonderingly, “they don’t seem to.  Why should they?”

“O, dear me, how can you look so innocent, and foolish, and good, and empty, and gentle, and all that, right in the hearing of such things as those!  Look me in the eye—­straight in the eye.  There, now then, answer me without a flinch.  Isn’t Doctor Snodgrass your father, and isn’t Zylobalsamum your brother,” [here Hawkins was about to enter the room, but changed his mind upon hearing these words, and elected for a walk down town, and so glided swiftly away], “and isn’t your name Spinal Meningitis, and isn’t your father a doctor and an idiot, like all the family for generations, and doesn’t he name all his children after poisons and pestilences and abnormal anatomical eccentricities of the human body?  Answer me, some way or somehow—­and quick.  Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it and see me going mad before your face with suspense!”

“Oh, I wish I could do—­do—­I wish I could do something, anything that would give you peace again and make you happy; but I know of nothing—­ I know of no way.  I have never heard of these awful people before.”

“What?  Say it again!”

“I have never—­never in my life till now.”

“Oh, you do look so honest when you say that!  It must be true—­surely you couldn’t look that way, you wouldn’t look that way if it were not true—­would you?”

“I couldn’t and wouldn’t.  It is true.  Oh, let us end this suffering—­ take me back into your heart and confidence—­”

“Wait—­one more thing.  Tell me you told that falsehood out of mere vanity and are sorry for it; that you’re not expecting to ever wear the coronet of an earl—­”