THE STEADFAST HEART
ant manner, “will mind your business and do as you’re told.”
Lydia stood for a moment, her arms stiff and straight at her sides, her hands gripped so that the knuckles showed white, and glared at the doctor’s unconscious back. She had a temper, that young woman, and something of an estimate of her importance in the world. She looked like a furious fairy. Then, quivering with the fury of outraged dignity, she rushed out of the room and down the stairs. On a chair in the hall rested the doctor’s high silk hat—it personified him. To Lydia it was a part of him, to be hurt, humiliated, as he had humiliated her. The sight of it was a crooked finger on the trigger of her temper and she smote it with her palm so that it rolled and bounced across the floor. Vindictively she followed it and crushed it into shapelessness with her foot….
Still at white heat she passed out of the house and marched up the street, cheeks blazing, chin aloft, and passed at intervals without recognizing them, no less than three intimate acquaintances.
Bishwhang and Jake Schwartz had been left standing on the sidewalk in front of the printing office, watching the carriage disappear. They remained as they stood until the sound of its wheels could no longer be heard. It was as though they were manikins from which the
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