Christmas eve came at last. When the twilight was just beginning to fall, Libby brought down the stockings which were to be hung on each side of the sitting-room fireplace. It would be nearly an hour before their father could come home to drive the nails on which they were to hang, but they wanted everything ready for him. Will'm went out to the tool-chest on the screened porch to get the hammer. It took him a long time to find it.
Libby waited impatiently a few moments, supposing he had stopped to taste something in the kitchen. She was about to run out and warn him not to nip the edges from some tempting bit of pastry, as he had been known to do, but remembering how very hard he had been trying to be good all week, she decided he could be trusted.
With the stockings thrown over one arm she stood in front of the piano, idly striking the keys while she waited. She had learned to play several tunes during the year, and now that she was eight years old, she was going to have real lessons after the holidays and learn to read music. How much she had learned since the first time her little fingers were guided over the keys. She struck those earliest-learned notes again: "Three blind mice! See how they run!" She could play the whole thing now, faster than flying. She ran down the keys, over and over again.
"Take it back!"
When for about the twentieth time "they all took after the farmer's wife," she stopped short, both hands lifted from the keys to listen. Her face blanched until even her lips were pale. Such a sound of awful battle was coming from the back yard! Recognizing Will'm's voice she ran out through the kitchen to the yard.
"It's that everlastin' Benjy, again!" called the cook as Libby darted out the door to rescue Will'm from she knew not what.
But it was Benjy who needed rescuing this time. Will'm sat on top, so mighty in his wrath and fury that he loomed up fearsomely to the bigger boy beneath him, whose body he bestrode and whose face he was battering with hard and relentless little fists. Both boys were blubbering and crying, but Will'm was roaring between blows, "Take it back! Take it back!"
Whatever it was, Benjy took it back just as Libby appeared, and being allowed to stagger up, started for the street, loudly boo-hooing at every step, as he found his way homeward, for once of his own volition. The cries had startled Libby but they were as nothing to the sight that met her eyes when she led Will'm, so blinded by his own tears that he needed her guidance, to the light of the kitchen door. What she saw sent her screaming into the house, with agonized calls for "mother." She still held on to Will'm's hand, pulling him along after her.
From forehead to chin, one side of his face was scratched as if a young tiger cat had set his claws in it. A knot was swelling rapidly on his upper lip, and one hand was covered with blood. Mrs. Branfield gave a gasp as she came running in answer to Libby's calls. "Why, you poor child!" she cried, gathering him up to her and sitting down in the big rocker with him in her lap. "What happened? What's the matter?"