than hear them. She put her hands over her ears and felt sick and
shivering.
I don t know what to do. I don t know what to do, she kept saying. I
can t bear it.
Once she wondered if he would stop if she dared go to him and then she
remembered how he had driven her out of the room and thought that
perhaps the sight of her might make him worse. Even when she pressed
her hands more tightly over her ears she could not keep the awful
sounds out. She hated them so and was so terrified by them that
suddenly they began to make her angry and she felt as if she should
like to fly into a tantrum herself and frighten him as he was
frightening her. She was not used to anyone s tempers but her own. She
took her hands from her ears and sprang up and stamped her foot.
He ought to be stopped! Somebody ought to make him stop! Somebody
ought to beat him! she cried out.
Just then she heard feet almost running down the corridor and her door
opened and the nurse came in. She was not laughing now by any means.
She even looked rather pale.
He s worked himself into hysterics, she said in a great hurry. He ll
do himself harm. No one can do anything with him. You come and try,
like a good child. He likes you.
He turned me out of the room this morning, said Mary, stamping her
foot with excitement.
The stamp rather pleased the nurse. The truth was that she had been
afraid she might find Mary crying and hiding her head under the
bed-clothes.
That s right, she said. You re in the right humor. You go and scold
him. Give him something new to think of. Do go, child, as quick as ever
you can.
It was not until afterward that Mary realized that the thing had been
funny as well as dreadful that it was funny that all the grown-up
141