It
is not given us to know how some animals know laughter, and know when
they are being laughed at; but it was this same way that White Fang knew
it. And he felt shame that the man-animals should be laughing at him. He
turned and fled away, not from the hurt of the fire, but from the
laughter that sank even deeper, and hurt in the spirit of him. And he
fled to Kiche, raging at the end of her stick like an animal gone mad--to
Kiche, the one creature in the world who was not laughing at him.
Twilight drew down and night came on, and White Fang lay by his mother's
side. His nose and tongue still hurt, but he was perplexed by a greater
trouble. He was homesick. He felt a vacancy in him, a need for the hush
and quietude of the stream and the cave in the cliff. Life had become
too populous. There were so many of the man-animals, men, women, and
children, all making noises and irritations. And there were the dogs,
ever squabbling and bickering, bursting into uproars and creating
confusions. The restful loneliness of the only life he had known was
gone. Here the very air was palpitant with life. It hummed and buzzed
unceasingly. Continually changing its intensity and abruptly variant in
pitch, it impinged on his nerves and senses, made him nervous and
restless and worried him with a perpetual imminence of happening.
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