There would be a sudden twitch of the muscles of the face, an instant distortion, which in the next instant had passed and left no trace.
These twitches gradually grew in frequency, but no muscle outside of the face lost any of its rigidity, or betrayed any interest in what was happening to Jim.

I mean if something _was_ happening to him, and I knew perfectly well that that was the case.

At last a pair of tears began to swim slowly down his cheeks amongst the twitchings, but Jim sat still and let them run; then I saw his right hand steal along his thigh until half-way to his knee, then take a vigorous grip upon the cloth.
That was a _wasp_ that he was grabbing! A colony of them were climbing up his legs and prospecting around, and every time he winced they stabbed him to the hilt--so for a quarter of an hour one group of excursionists after another climbed up Jim's legs and resented even the slightest wince or squirm that he indulged himself with, in his misery.
When the entertainment had become nearly unbearable, he conceived the idea of gripping them between his fingers and putting them out of commission.

He succeeded with many of them, but at great cost, for, as he couldn't see the wasp, he was as likely to take hold of the wrong end of him as he was the right; then the dying wasp gave him a punch to remember the incident by.
If those ladies had stayed all day, and if all the wasps in Missouri had come and climbed up Jim's legs, nobody there would ever have known it but Jim and the wasps and me.

There he would have sat until the ladies left.
When they finally went away we went up-stairs and he took his clothes off, and his legs were a picture to look at.