venturous familiarities of the young, shocked me profoundly. I! I! And Rawdon did n't find me indispensable either. I felt I was suddenly repudiated by the universe and threatened with effacement, that in some positive and emphatic way I must at once assert myself. There was no balm in the religion I had learnt, or in the irreligion I had adopted, for wounded, self-love.
Should I fling up Rawdon's place at once and then in some extraordinary, swift manner make the fortune of Frobisher's adjacent and closely competitive pot-bank?
The first part of that program, at any rate, would be easy of accomplishment, to go to Rawdon and say, "You will hear from me again," but for the rest, Frobisher might fail me. That, however, was a secondary issue. The predominant affair was with Nettie. I found my mind thick-shot with flying fragments of rhetoric that might be of service in the letter I would write her. Scorn, irony, tenderness—what was it to be? . . .
"Brother!" said Parload, suddenly.
"What?" said I.
"They 're firing up at Bladden's iron-works, and the smoke comes right across my bit of sky."
The interruption came just as I was ripe to discharge my thoughts upon him.
