“You only wanted a pretext,” she said, “to get rid of us. I thought you would, sooner or later. Perhaps you put it there yourself.”
Her voice was rising to bitterer significance, when she heard a sound at her side, and, turning, made a frantic clutch at her brother as he slid to the floor. His head came with a little thwack on the boards; and there he lay with clinched teeth and a face like a stone.
Then—“Oh! oh!” she wailed, and threw herself down beside him.
Mr. Tuke was very embarrassed and a little shocked. He took no resentment over the girl’s spirit, though he still firmly believed she lied about the skull. But after all, it was patently unjust to hold the man responsible for the cantrips of so unmanageable a charge.
He seized a jug of water.
“Here—pour some of this over him,” he said. “He’s fainted like a woman.”
She looked up at him with fierce eyes; but she took the jug nevertheless.
“He’s a better man than you!” she cried. “He can suffer and endure; and fight too, when there’s need.”
She was human enough in her fearless championship of her own flesh and blood.
The gentleman laughed uneasily, and, feeling himself under the circumstances a little de trop, left the hall, with a certain consciousness of shame tingling in his heels.