“Ah!”
“I dare say he didn't stop to think, you know; but I don't envy him having done it. Well, sir, he paid for it. The girl just gave one sort of a yell—you could not call it anything else—and she went right at his head, both claws going and as quick one after another as a cat. The blood squirted like a fountain—I never saw anything like it. She'd have killed him if it hadn't been for Hodges and me.”
“Killed him? nonsense—a great strong fellow!”
“No nonsense at all, sir. She was stronger than he was for a moment or two and that moment would have done his business. She meant killing. Sir,” said Evans, lowering his voice, “her teeth were making for his jugular when I wrenched her away, and it was like tearing soul from body to get her off him, and she snarling and her teeth gnashing for him all the time.”
Mr. Eden winced.
“The wretched creature! I was putting her on the way to heaven, and in one moment they made a fiend of her. Evans, you are not the same man you were a month ago.”
“No, sir, that I am not. When I think of what a brute I used to be to them poor creatures, I don't seem to know myself.”
“What has changed you?”
“Oh, you know very well.”
“Do I? No; I have a guess; but—”