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 as red-hot as ever—and, if anything, red-hotter—raging against Mr. Marsden, and bringing up the Vincents, as though it had happened yesterday. When papa once gets a grouch on, Time's healing hand doesn't count for anything; and mamma was hardly any better. In a small place, once a person's an outcast, they make a kind of rubbish heap of him, and pile on all the crimes of the calendar, from morphine to manslaughter—all the tin cans and broken bottles of slander and innuendo—till it grows to be a mountain!

I tried to put in a good word or two, but it wasn't of the faintest use, since mamma was now certain he was a vivisectionist, and papa said those morose, sullen fellows, who make hermits of themselves, invariably ended in homicidal mania. I hinted at electrical research, but papa said, "Oh, bosh!" and that it was more likely to be the whisky bottle. I didn't argue any further, because I was too afraid and too hurt—and what was the good? But I took a kind of morbid pleasure in think-