wanted to cry with vexation. Amy chatted happily along, as they walked, for her heart was singing, but Tom’s tongue had lost its function. He did not hear what Amy was saying, and whenever she paused expectantly he could only stammer an awkward assent, which was as often misplaced as otherwise. He kept drifting to the rear of the schoolhouse, again and again, to sear his eyeballs with the hateful spectacle there. He could not help it. And it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that Becky Thatcher never once suspected that he was even in the land of the living. But she did see, nevertheless; and she knew she was winning her fight, too, and was glad to see him suffer as she had suffered.
Amy’s happy prattle became intolerable. Tom hinted at things he had to attend to; things that must be done; and time was fleeting. But in vain—the girl chirped on. Tom thought, “Oh, hang her, ain’t I ever going to get rid of her?” At last he must be attending to those things—and she said artlessly that she would be “around” when school let out. And he hastened away, hating her for it.
“Any other boy!” Tom thought, grating his teeth. “Any boy in the whole town but that Saint Louis smarty that thinks he dresses so fine and is aristocracy! Oh, all right, I licked you the first day you ever saw this town, mister, and I’ll lick you again! You just wait till I catch you out! I’ll just take and—”
And he went through the motions of thrashing an imaginary boy—pummelling the air, and kicking and gouging. “Oh, you do, do you? You holler ’nough, do you? Now, then, let that learn you!” And so the imaginary flogging was finished to his satisfaction.
Tom fled home at noon. His conscience could not endure any more of Amy’s grateful happiness, and his jealousy could bear no more of the other distress. Becky resumed her picture inspections with Alfred, but as