“Yes,” said the child, after a moment of silence.
“Did you hear me say that no dog was to sleep in this house?” demanded the child’s father.
“Yes,” said Elmer, with his own face as white as his father’s. 181
“Then I think that’s about enough,” asserted Duncan, turning a challenging eye in my direction.
“What are you going to do?” I asked. My voice was shaking, in spite of myself.
“I’m going to whale that youngster within an inch of his life,” said the master of the house, with a deadly sort of intentness.
“I don’t want you to do that,” I quavered, wondering why my words, even as I uttered them, should seem so inadequate.
“Of course you don’t,” mocked my husband. “But this is the limit. And what you want isn’t going to count!”
“I don’t want you to do that,” I repeated. Something in my voice, I suppose, must have arrested him, for he stood there, staring at me, with a little knot coming and going on one side of his skull, just in front of his upper ear-tip.
“And why not?” he asked, still with that hateful rough ironic note in his voice.