The bartender, sweeping the snow from
before the door of the saloon, shouted at him. "Hey, Norman!" he
called. "Sweet Norman! Norman is too pretty a name. Beaut is the name
for you! Oh you Beaut!"
The tall boy pushed the cart silently along the street. Again he hated
Coal Creek. He hated the bakery and the bakery cart. With a burning
satisfying hate he hated Uncle Charlie Wheeler and the Reverend Minot
Weeks. "Fat old fools," he muttered as he shook the snow off his hat
and paused to breathe in the struggle up the hill. He had something
new to hate. He hated his own name. It did sound ridiculous. He had
thought before that there was something fancy and pretentious about
it. It did not fit a bakery cart boy. He wished it might have been
plain John or Jim or Fred. A quiver of irritation at his mother passed
through him. "She might have used more sense," he muttered.
And then the thought came to him that his father might have chosen the
name. That checked his flight toward universal hatred and he began
pushing the cart forward again, a more genial current of thought
running through his mind. The tall boy loved the memory of his father,
"Cracked McGregor." "They called him 'Cracked' until that became his
name," he thought. "Now they are at me." The thought renewed a feeling
of fellowship between himself and his dead father--it softened him.
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