Mr. Lawrence soon joined them, and his first question was, “Will, are you hurt?”
“Only a very little, pa,” said Will.
“How thankful I am for that!” Mr. Lawrence exclaimed fervently. “You must have had a narrow escape, however.”
“A very narrow escape,” Mr. Jackson echoed tremulously.
Mr. Lawrence, assured of his son’s safety, now directed his attention to the farmer. “Well, Mr. Jackson,” he said suddenly, “what seems to be the matter?”
This blunt question so unsettled the practical joker’s mind that he faltered, and at last said, with much emotion: “Matter, Mr. Lawrence?—Why, it, it was—you see—I mean, he came,—that is, the horse—the horse—the horse, the horse, the horse, the horse——”
Seeing that the embarrassed man was likely to continue repeating these two words till delirium set in, or till his tongue whizzed equal to the fly-wheel of a powerful steam-engine, Will cut him short by saying, with pardonable spite: “Pa, he’s trying to tell you that he wants pay for the damage that Go It did.”
To many persons this might have been unintelligible, but not so to Mr. Lawrence. Gathering a hint from the little boys’ gibberish, at a single glance he had taken in all that had happened, and knowing the violence of Jackson’s temper, he could guess at what had passed between him and Will.
“Let us have a settlement, Mr. Jackson,” he said.