“For Pete's sake!” shouted Arthur. “Don't just stand there!--can't you do SOMETHING?”
But Missy could do nothing. Removing Gypsy was no longer the paramount issue. Ready to die of shame but at the same time engripped by deadly terror, she stood, legs wide apart, for her life's sake unable to move. She had lost count of time, but was agonizedly aware of its passage; she seemed to stand there in that anguished stupor for centuries. In reality it was but a second before she heard Arthur's voice again:
“For Heaven's sake!” he muttered, calamity's approach intensifying his abjurgations. “There's the old man!”
Apprehensively, abasedly, but with legs still stolidly apart, Missy looked up. Yes, there was Mr. Picker, elbowing his way through the crowd. Then an icy trickle chilled her spine; following Mr. Picker, carrying his noon mail, was Rev. MacGill.
“Here!--What's this?” demanded Mr. Picker.
Then she heard Arthur, that craven-hearted, traitor-souled being she had once called “friend,” that she had even desired to impress,--she heard him saying:
“I don't know, Mr. Picker. She just came riding in--”
Mr. Picker strode to the centre of the stage and, by a simple expedient strangely unthought-of before--by merely pulling away the bucket, separated Gypsy from the candy.
Then he turned to Missy and eyed her disapprovingly.
“I think you'd better be taking the back cut home. If I was your mamma, I'd give you a good spanking and put you to bed.”
Spanking! Oh, shades of insouciance and swagger! And with Rev. MacGill standing there hearing--and seeing! Tears rolled down over her blushes.
“Here, I'll help you get her out,” said Rev. MacGill, kindly. Missy blessed him for his kindness, yet, just then, she felt she'd rather have been stung to death than to have had him there. But he was there, and he led Gypsy, quite tractable now the candy was gone, and herself looking actually embarrassed, through the crowd and back to the street.
High moments have a way, sometimes, of resolving their prime and unreducible factors, all of a sudden, to disconcertingly simple terms. Here was Gypsy, whose stubbornness had begun it all, suddenly soft as silk; and there was the wasp, who had brought on the horrendous climax, suddenly and mysteriously vanished. Of course Missy was glad the wasp was gone--otherwise she might have stood there, dying of shame, till she did die of shame--yet the sudden solution of her dilemma made her feel in another way absurd.