THE HARVARD INSTRUCTOR
"The saddest things that I have seen are the burned pine woods and the
diseased Indians."--_The Murmuring Pine_.
The University campus was a huge square of green, elm dotted, that was
bordered on one edge for a quarter of a mile by the lake. The other
three sides were enclosed by the college buildings, great Gothic piles
of gray stone, ivy grown, with swallow haunted eaves. One entered the
campus through wide archways, that framed from the street ravishing
views of lake and elm, with leisurely figures of seniors in cap and
gown in the foreground.
College life was not much unlike High School life for Lydia. She of
course missed the dormitory living which is what makes University
existence unique. The cottage was nearly three miles from the campus.
Lydia took a street-car every morning, leaving the house with her
father. She was very timid at first: suffered agony when called on to
recite: reached all her classes as early as possible and sat in a far
corner to escape notice. But gradually, among the six thousand
students she began to lose her self-consciousness and to feel that,
after all, she was only attending a larger High School.
It was curious, it seemed to her, in how short a time the real High
School dropped out of her life. Miss Towne and the cooking teacher who
had had so much to do with her adolescent development, became more or
less dreamlike. And though Lydia did try to call on Miss Towne at the
High School, her days were very full and little by little she slipped
away entirely from the old environment.
Except for flying visits home, John Levine spent the year at
Washington. He was returned to Congress practically automatically, at
the end of his term. Kent throve mightily as a real estate man. He
dashed about in a little "one lung" car with all the importance of
nineteen in business for the first time. He continued to call on Lydia
at irregular intervals in order to boast, she thought, of his real
estate acumen and of his correspondence with Margery and Olga, both of
whom were now at boarding-school.
Lydia was taking a general course in college. In a vague way, she was
planning to become a teacher and partly because she had no aptitude for
foreign languages, and partly because of the deep impression Miss
Towne's little lecture on slang had made on her, she decided to teach
English. She therefore took not only the required course in Freshman
Composition, but an elective in Shakespeare, and was herded with fifty
others into the classroom of a young instructor fresh from Harvard. He
was a frail looking young man, smooth shaven and thin, with large,
light brown eyes behind gold rimmed eyeglasses.
Lydia was deeply impressed from the very first by the young man's
culture. He could quote Latin and Greek quite as freely as he could
French and German and his ease in quoting the latter seemed as great as
in quoting Palgrave's Lyrics, which Lydia was sure he could quote from
cover to cover.
If his manner was a trifle impatient and condescending, this only
served to enhance his impressiveness. And he knew his Shakespeare.
Lydia entered under his guidance that ever new and ever old world of
beauty that only the born Shakespeare lover discovers.
The Christmas recess had come and gone before Lydia became vaguely
conscious that young Professor Willis called on her always to recite,
whether he did on any other girl in the class or not. She did not know
that from the first day she had entered his class the young professor
had been conscious of the yellow head in the furthest corner of the
classroom. It was a nobly shaped head bound round with curly yellow
braids above a slender face, red cheeked yet delicate. He was
conscious too of the home-made suit and the cheap shirtwaists, with the
pathetic attempt at variety through different colored neckties. Little
by little he recognized that the bashful young person had a mental
background not shared by her mates, and he wondered about her.
It was early in January that he made an attempt to satisfy his
curiosity. The snowfall had been light so far and heavy winds had
blown the lake clear of drifts. Lydia often brought her skates to
class with her and if the wind were favorable skated home after her
last recitation.
She had just fastened on her skates one day when a rather breathless
voice behind her said,
"Going for a skate, Miss Dudley?" and Professor Willis, skates over his
shoulder, bore down on her.
Lydia blushed vividly--"I--I often skate home. I live three miles down
the shore."
"Rather thought I'd have a try myself, if you don't mind."
"Heavens!" thought Lydia. "I hope he won't come clear home with me?
The house looks awful!"
Willis fastened on his skates and stood up. "Which way?" he asked.
Lydia nodded homeward and started off silently, the Harvard man close
beside her.
"You enjoy your Shakespeare work, Miss Dudley?" he asked.
"Oh, yes!" cried Lydia. "That most of anything. Don't you love to
teach it?"
"Er--in some ways! I will admit that the co-educational end of it is
very trying to an Eastern college man."
This was such a surprising view to Lydia that she forgot to be bashful.
"Don't you like girls, Professor Willis?" she asked.
"Not in a boys' classroom--that is--at first the situation brought cold
sweat to my face. But now, I carry on the work to a great extent for
you. You are the only person with a background, don't you know."
Lydia didn't know. The Harvard man's voice, however, was entirely
impersonal, so she ventured to explore.
"What do you mean by background?"
"If you wouldn't skate so outrageously fast," he panted, "I could tell
you with more--more aplomb."
"But," explained Lydia, "I have to skate fast. There's always so much
to be done and old Lizzie isn't well."
She looked at the Shakespeare professor innocently. He looked at his
watch.
"Dear me!" he said, "I must be back in the classroom in half an hour.
Supposing we continue this conversation to-morrow, in your own home,
Miss Dudley? May I call to-morrow night?"
"Why yes," replied Lydia, in utter embarrassment again, "if you really
want to! It's a dreadful trip,--to the end of the car line and half a
mile along the road to a white cottage after that."
"That's nothing," said the Harvard man, gravely. "Till to-morrow night
then," and lifting his cap, he skated back, leaving Lydia in a state of
mind difficult to define.
She told Lizzie and her father that evening. Amos looked over his
paper with a slight scowl. "You're too young to have a college
professor calling."
"Well," cried Lydia, "you don't seem to realize how wonderful it is
that he wants to take this awful trip out here, just to see _me_. And
don't let it worry you, Daddy! He'll never want to come but once."
She looked around the living-room disgustedly.
Amos started to speak, looked at Lizzie, who shook her head, and
subsided. The older Lydia grew, the more helpless he felt in guiding
her. It seemed to him though that Patience would be pleased to have a
professor calling on her daughter, and he let the matter go at that.
The next day was Saturday, and Lydia started an attack on the
living-room immediately after breakfast. She re-oiled the floors. She
took down the curtains, washed and ironed them and put them up again.
She blacked the base burner and gave the howling Adam a bath. The old
mahogany worried her, even after she had polished it and re-arranged it
until the worst of the scratches were obscured.
Her father's old wooden armchair, a solid mahogany that had belonged to
his great-grandfather, she decided to varnish. She gave it two heavy
coats and set it close to the kitchen stove to dry. By this time she
was tired out. She lay in the dusk on the old couch watching the red
eyes of the base burner, when Billy came in.
"Just stopped on my way home to see if you'd go skating to-night," he
said. "Tired out? What've you been doing?"
Lydia enumerated the day's activities ending with, "Professor Willis is
coming to call this evening."
Billy gave a low whistle. "Of course, I knew they'd begin to take
notice sooner or later. But I don't see why you wanted to wear
yourself out for a sissy like him."
"He's not a sissy. He's a gentleman," said Lydia, calmly. She was
still curled up on the couch and Billy could just distinguish her
bright hair in the red glow from the stove.
Billy was silent for a moment, then he said, "It's a shame you have to
work so hard. I think of you so often when I see other girls in their
pretty clothes, gadding about! Doggone it! and you're worth any ten of
them. If I had my way--"
He paused and for a moment only the familiar booming of the ice
disturbed the silence.
"I don't mind the work so much as I do going without the pretty
clothes," said Lydia. "I suppose you'll think I'm awful silly," she
suddenly sat up in her earnestness, "but when I get to thinking about
how I'm growing up and that dresses never can mean to me when I'm old
what they do now--oh, I can't explain to a man! It's like Omar
Khayyam--
"'Yet ah, that Spring should vanish with the rose
That youth's sweet scented manuscript should close--'
and my youth's going to close without the sweet scent of the rose."
Billy made one great stride over to the couch and sitting down beside
Lydia he took her thin, work hardened little hands in his. "Lydia, no!
You don't see yourself right! All the dresses in the world couldn't
make you sweeter or more fragrant to a fellow's heart than you are now.
The only importance to the clothes is that you love them so. Don't you
see?"
Lydia laughed uncertainly. "I see that you're a dear old blarney,
Billy. And I know one thing I have got that not one girl in a thousand
has and that is the friendship of some of the best men in the world.
In lots of ways, I'm very lucky. Honestly, I am! Trot on home, Billy.
I've got to get supper. And I don't have to work so hard, remember
that. Half my work is in trying to fix up the house."
Billy rose reluctantly. "I'm leaving you some marshmallows," he said.
"I hope if you offer Willis one, it'll choke him, or," as he opened the
door, "maybe he'll break his leg or his neck on the way out," and he
shut the door firmly behind him.
Amos submitted with some grumbling to being relegated to the
dining-room with Lizzie for the evening. He complained somewhat
bitterly, however, over the condition of his armchair which had refused
to dry and was in a state of stickiness that defied description.
Old Lizzie, who was almost as flushed and bright-eyed over the expected
caller as Lydia, finally squelched Amos with the remark, "For the
land's sake, Amos, you talk like an old man instead of a man still
forty who ought to remember his own courting days!"
Willis arrived, shortly after eight. If the trip had been somewhat
strenuous, he did not mention the fact. He shook hands with Amos, who,
always eager to meet new people, would have lingered. But Lizzie
called to him and he reluctantly withdrew. Lydia established her guest
with his back to the dining-room door and the evening began.
The Harvard man was frankly curious. This was his first experience
west of New York and he was trying to classify his impressions. The
beauty of Lake City had intrigued him at first, he told Lydia, into
believing that he was merely in a transplanted New England town. "And
you know there are plenty of New Englanders on the faculty and many of
the people of Lake Shore Avenue are second and third generation New
Englanders. But the townspeople as a whole!" He stopped with a groan.
"What's the matter with them?" Lydia asked, a trifle belligerently.
She was sitting on the couch, chin cupped in her hand, watching her
caller so intently that she was forgetting to be bashful.
"Oh, you know they're so exactly like my classes in
Shakespeare--raw-minded, no background, and plenty of them are of New
England descent! I don't understand it. It's New England without its
ancient soul, your Middle West."
"I don't know what you mean by background," said Lydia.
"But, Miss Dudley, you have it! Something, your reading or your
environment has given you a mental referendum, as it were. You get
more out of your Shakespeare than most of your mates because you
understand so many of his references. You must have been a wide reader
or your father and mother taught you well."
"I--you've got the wrong impression about me," Lydia protested. "I've
read always and mostly good things, thanks to Mr. Levine, but so have
many other people in Lake City."
Professor Willis looked at Lydia thoughtfully. "Levine? I thought he
was a cheap scamp."
Lydia flushed. "He's my best friend and a finely read man. He's kept
me supplied with books."
"Finely read, on the one hand," exclaimed Willis, "and on the other
robbing Indians. How do you account for it?"
Lydia did not stir. She continued with her crystal gaze on this wise
man from the East, struggling to get his viewpoint. There flashed into
her mind the thought that perhaps, when she knew him better, he could
help her on the Indian question.
"I can't account for it," she said. "I wish I could. Except for a
French Canadian great-grandfather, Mr. Levine's a New Englander too."
"New Englander! Pshaw! Outside of Lake Shore Avenue and the college
there are no New Englanders here. They are hollow mockeries, unless,"
he stared at Lydia through his gold-rimmed glass, "unless you are a
reversion to type, yourself."
Lizzie spoke from the dining-room. "The chocolate's all ready, Lydia."
"Oh, I forgot," exclaimed Lydia, flying out of the room and returning
with a tray of chocolate and cake. "The cold walk must have made you
hungry."
Willis drew up to the table, and over his cup of chocolate remarked,
"Ah--pardon me if I comment on the wonderful pieces of mahogany you
have."
Lydia set down her cup. "Why, I hate it!" she cried.
"Hate it! It's priceless! Family pieces? I thought so! What
delicious cake! How kind of your mother! I'd like to meet her, if I
may."
"I made the cake, Professor Willis. My--my mother is not living."
The Harvard man's stilted manner left him. He set down his cup
hastily. "Oh, my dear!" he exclaimed. "I was tactless! Forgive me!"
Again he looked about the room and back at Lydia's face above the
meager dress fashioned the year before from a cheap remnant. Could a
mother's death, he wondered, have put the look into her eyes and lips
he had often surprised there. "I suppose," he said finally, "that one
might explain you, eventually, if one had the privilege of knowing you
long enough, I--"
Adam chose this moment to yelp at the dining-room door which was barely
ajar.
"Adam, be quiet!" roared Amos. "Liz, did you see my carpet slippers
anywhere?" he added in a lower voice.
"I brought you a book," said Willis. "Browning's Dramatic Lyrics."
"I'd like to read them," Lydia spoke eagerly, with one ear on the
dining-room.
Amos yawned loudly. "Did you wind the clock, Lizzie? No? Well, I
will!" Another loud yawn and Amos was heard to begin on the mechanism
of the huge old wall clock which wound with a sound like an
old-fashioned chain pump. Lydia set her teeth in misery.
"Yes, you must add Browning to your background," said the Harvard man,
appearing undisturbed by the sounds in the next room. "Browning is
difficult at times but--" He was interrupted by a great clattering in
the dining-room.
"Lizzie!" roared Amos. "Come here and pull this chair off of me. The
next time Lydia varnishes anything--"
There was the sound of Lizzie pounding across the floor. The
dining-room door was banged and after that the murmur of Lizzie's voice
and subdued roars from Amos. Lydia looked at Willis in an agony of
embarrassment.
"Well," he said, rising, "it's quite a walk back to the trolley.
Perhaps I'd better be going."
Lydia rose with alacrity. "I'm--I'm glad you like the mahogany," she
said awkwardly.
"Er--yes. So am I," returned Willis, making for the door as Amos
groaned again. "Good night, Miss Dudley."
"Good night," said Lydia, and closing the door with a gasp of relief
she dashed for the dining-room.
"Just when I'm trying to be refined and lady-like!" she wailed. Then
she stopped.
"Lydia," roared Amos, "if you ever touch my chair again! Look at my
shirt and pants!"
Lydia looked and from these to the chair, denuded of the two coats of
varnish. "But you knew it wasn't dry," she protested.
"How could I remember?" cried Amos. "I just sat down a minute to put
on my slippers you'd hid."
"I don't see why you couldn't have been quiet about it," Lydia half
sobbed. "We were having such a nice time and all of a sudden it
sounded like an Irish wake out here. It embarrassed Professor Willis
so he went right home and I know he'll never come back."
"I should hope he wouldn't," retorted Amos. "Of course, what a college
professor thinks is more important than my comfort. Why, that varnish
went through my shirt to my skin. Liz, what are you laughing at?"
Lizzie had suppressed her laughter till she was weak. "At you, Amos!
Till my dying day, I'll never forget how you looked prancing round the
room with that chair glued to your back!"
"Oh, Daddy! It must have been funny!" cried Lydia, beginning to giggle.
Amos looked uncertainly at his two women folk, and then his lips
twisted and he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.
"Lydia! Lydia!" he cried, "don't try to be elegant with any more of
your callers! It's too hard on your poor old father!"
"I won't," replied Lydia. "He likes the mahogany, anyway. But he'll
never come again," she added, with sudden gloom. "Not that I care,
stiff old Harvard thing," and she patted Adam and went soberly to bed.
But Professor Willis did come again. Not so frequently, of course, as
to compromise his dignity. An instructor who called on freshman girls
was always laughed at. But several times during the winter and spring
he appeared at the cottage, and talked with Lydia earnestly and
intellectually. Nor did he always confine his calls to the evening.
One Sunday afternoon in March Amos was in town with John Levine, who
was on one of his hurried visits home, when Billy Norton came over to
the cottage.
Lydia, who was poring over "The Ring and the Book," saw at once that
something was wrong.
"What's worrying you, Billy?" she asked.
"Lydia," he said, dropping into Amos' chair and folding his big arms,
"you know my tract of land--the one I was going to buy from an Indian?
I paid young Lone Wolf a ten dollar option on it while I looked round
to see how I could raise enough to pay him a fair price. He's only a
kid of seventeen and stone blind from trachoma. Well, yesterday I
found that Marshall had bought it in. Of course, I didn't really think
Lone Wolf knew what an option was, but Marshall and the Indian Agent
and Levine and all the rest knew what I was trying to do, so I thought
they'd keep their hands off."
"What a shame!" exclaimed Lydia.
"Yes," said Billy grimly, a certain tensity in his tones that made
Lydia look at him more closely, "Yes, a shame. The way Marshall did it
was this. He looked young Lone Wolf up and gave him a bag of candy.
The Indians are crazy for candy. Then he told him to make his cross on
a piece of paper. That that was a receipt that he was to keep and if
he'd show it at the store whenever he wanted candy, he'd have all he
wanted, for nothing. And he had two half-breeds witness it. What
Marshall had done was to get Lone Wolf to sign a warranty deed, giving
Marshall his pine land. The poor devil of an Indian didn't know it
till yesterday when he showed me his 'receipt' in great glee. Of
course, they'll swear he's a mixed blood."
Lydia was speechless with disgust for a moment, then she burst out,
"Oh, I wish that reservation had never been heard of! It demoralizes
every one who comes in contact with it."
"Lydia," said Billy, slowly, "I'm going to expose Marshall."
"What do you mean?" Lydia looked a little frightened.
"I mean that I'm going to show up his crooked deals with the Indians.
I'm going to rip this reservation graft wide open. I'm not going to
touch an acre of the land myself so I can go in with clean hands and
I'm not going to forget that I came pretty close to being a skunk,
myself."
"Oh, but, Billy!" cried Lydia. "There's John Levine and all our
friends--oh, you can't do it!"
"Look here, Lydia," Billy's voice was stern, "are you for or against
Indian graft?"
Lydia drew a long breath but was spared an immediate answer for there
was a knock on the door and Kent came in, followed shortly by Professor
Willis.
"Well," said Kent, after Lydia had settled them all comfortably, "I
just left Charlie Jackson--poor old prune!"
"Oh, how is he?" asked Lydia eagerly, "and what is he doing?"
"He's pretty seedy," answered Kent. "He's been trying to keep the
whites off the reservation by organizing the full bloods to stand
against the half-breeds. But after a year of trying he's given up
hope. The full bloods are fatalists, you know, and Charlie has gone
back to it himself."
"Charlie Jackson is an old schoolmate of ours." Lydia turned to Willis
and gave him a rapid sketch of Charlie's life. The Harvard man was
deeply interested.
"Can't you get him back to his work with the doctor?" he asked Kent.
Kent shook his head. "The only way to keep an Indian from reverting is
to put him where he never can see his people or the reservation.
Charlie's given up. He's drinking a little."
"And still you folks will keep on, stealing the reservation!" exclaimed
Billy.
Kent gave Billy a grin, half irritated, half whimsical. "I know it's
Sunday, old man, but don't let's have a sermon. You're a farmer, Bill,
anyhow, no matter what else you try to be."
"Thank God for that," laughed Billy.
"My word!" ejaculated Willis. "What a country! You spout the classics
on week days and on holidays you steal from the aborigines!"
"Oh, here, draw it mild, Professor!" growled Kent.
"Well, but it's true," exclaimed Lydia. "Where's our old New England
sense of fairness?"
"That's good too," said Kent. "Who was brisker than our forefathers at
killing redskins?"
"Altogether a different case," returned the Harvard man. "Our
forefathers killed in self-defense. You folks are killing out of
wanton greed."
"That's the point, exactly," said Billy.
Kent gave his cheerful grin. "Call it what you please," he laughed.
"As long as the whites _will_ have the land, I'm going to get my share."
Nobody spoke for a moment. Lydia looked from Billy to Kent, and back
again. Kent was by far the handsomer of the two. He had kept the
brilliant color and the charming glow in his eyes that had belonged to
his boyhood. He dressed well, and sat now, knees crossed, hands
clasped behind his head, with easy grace. Billy was a six-footer,
larger than Kent and inclined to be raw-boned. His mouth was humorous
and sensitive, his gray eyes were searching.
"Let's not talk about it," Lydia said. "Let's go out in the kitchen
and pop corn and make candy." This with a little questioning glance at
the professor of Shakespeare. He, however, rose with alacrity, and the
rest of the afternoon passed without friction. Willis developed a
positive passion for making popcorn balls and he left with Kent at dusk
proudly bearing off a bag of the results of his labors.
Billy stayed after the rest and helped Lydia to clean up the dishes.
Kent would never have thought of this, Lydia said to herself with a
vague pang. When they had finished Billy gravely took Lydia's coat
from the hook and said, "Come, woman, and walk in the gloaming with
your humble servant."
Lydia giggled and obeyed. There was still snow, in the hollows but the
road was clear and frozen hard. They walked briskly till a rise in the
road gave them a view of the lake and a scarlet rift in the sky where
the sun had sunk in a bank of clouds.
"Now, Lydia," said Billy, "answer my question. Are you for or against
Indian graft?"
"I just won't take sides," announced Lydia, obstinately.
Billy stepped round in front of the young girl and put both hands
gently on her shoulders. "Look at me, Lydia," he said. "You have to
take sides! You can't escape it. You mean too much to too many of us
men. You've got to take a perfectly clear stand on questions like
this. It means too much to America for you not to. Your influence
counts, in that way if in no other, don't you see."
Lydia's throat tightened. "I won't take sides against Mr. Levine," she
repeated.
"Do you mean that you don't want me to expose Marshall?" asked Billy.
"You've no right to ask me that." Lydia's voice was cross.
"But I have. Lydia, though you don't want it, my life is yours. No
matter whether we can ever be anything else, we are friends, aren't we,
friends in the deepest sense of the word,--aren't we, Lydia?"
Lydia stared at Billy in silence. Perhaps it was the glow from the
west that helped to deepen and soften his gray eyes, for there was
nothing searching in them now. There was a depth and loyalty in them
and a something besides that reminded her vaguely of the way John
Levine looked at her. A crow cawed faintly from the woods and the wind
fluttered Billy's hair.
Friendship! Something very warm and high and fine entered Lydia's
heart.
"Yes, we are friends. Billy," she said slowly. "But oh, Billy, don't
make me decide that!"
"Lydia, you must! You can't have a friend and not share his problems
and you can't live in a community and not share its problems, if you're
going to be worth anything to the world."
"But if the problems really meant anything to you," protested Lydia,
"you wouldn't depend on some girl to shove you into them."
"But men do. They are built that way. Not _some_ girl but _the girl_.
Every great cause was fought for some woman! Oh, Lydia, Lydia!"
"Billy," Lydia looked away from him to the lake, "you'll have to let me
think about it. You see, it's deciding my attitude toward all my
friends, even toward Dad. And I hadn't intended ever to decide."
"And will you tell me, to-morrow, or next day, Lydia?"
"I'll tell you as soon as I decide," she answered.
Amos brought John Levine home with him for supper. It seemed to Lydia
that Levine never had been dearer to her than he was that evening.
After supper, they drew up around the base burner in the old way, while
the two men smoked. Lizzie sat rocking and rubbing her
rheumatism-racked old hands and Adam, who snored worse as he grew old,
wheezed with his head baking under the stove. Levine did not talk of
the Indians, to Lydia's relief, but of Washington politics. As the
evening drew to a close, and Amos went out to his chickens as usual
after Lizzie had gone to bed, John turned to Lydia.
"What are you reading, these days, young Lydia?"
"Browning--'The Ring and the Book,'" replied Lydia.
John shook his head. "Really grown up, aren't you, Lydia? Do you
enjoy being a young lady?"
"Yes, I do, only I miss the old days when I saw so much of you."
"Do you, my dear?" asked Levine, eagerly. "In what ways do you miss
me?"
"Oh, every way! No one will ever understand me as you do."
"Oh, I don't know. There are Billy and Kent."
Lydia shook her head, though Billy's face in the moonlight after the
graduation party, returned unexpectedly to her memory as she did so.
"There'll never be any one like you." Then moved by a sudden impulse
she leaned toward him and said, "No matter what happens, you will
always know that I love you, won't you, Mr. Levine?"
John looked at the wistful face, keenly. "Why, what could happen,
young Lydia?"
"Oh, lots of things! I'm grown up now and--and I have to make
decisions about the rightness and the wrongness of things. But no
matter what I decide, _nothing_ can change my love for you."
"Lydia, come here," said Levine, abruptly.
In the old way, Lydia came to his side and he pulled her down to the
arm of his chair. For a moment they sat in silence, his arm about her,
her cheek against his hair, staring into the glowing stove.
"When you were just a little tot," said Levine at last, "you were full
of gumption and did your own thinking. And I've been glad to see you
keep the habit. Always make your own decisions, dear. Don't let me or
any one else decide matters of conscience for you. 'To thine own self
be true and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be
false to any man.' Eh, little girl?"
He rose as he heard Amos coming in the back door, and with his hand
under Lydia's chin, he looked long and earnestly into her eyes. Then
as Billy had done earlier in the evening, he sighed, "Oh, Lydia!
Lydia!" and turned away.