Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/96

 he, he told himself, cared nothing for them. A soft rose-tint of unreality clothed all his world. He grew moody and morose. He even tried to put his feelings into song, on several occasions. One of these he actually indited, in his own blood, and left under the sidewalk crossing for Annie Eliza. He washed his face without being nagged to do so, behind the ears and all. He likewise purchased a fifteen-cent bottle of perfume, and in the mornings smugly wet and plastered down his thick mat of russet hair, and on one occasion tallowed it copiously, only disgustedly to wash it off with coal-oil on being asked by his father if he had been swimming near the slaughter-house again. He even grew sensitive as to deportment and apparel, and always took off his hat in the house, and passed things at table, and attempted many striking efforts toward personal adornment, from a hold-back strap off the harness for a belt, to a discarded necktie of his father's,—to say nothing of a huge glass buckle-head purloined from Plato's bridle, and now riveted jauntily on the lapel of his coat.

Even the impending advent of the circus