Through the opened front door came his faint voice. "Come down to the steps, Mary." She caught up the lantern, and picked her way down to him.
"I told that boy to oil these hinges, sure, this afternoon. And look at that pile of trash,—he hardly touched it. Here's the shovel. He hasn't done a single chore since I left the mountain."
Mary lighted the way back to the house, thoroughly upset.
Two mornings later, Paul called the boy. "Come into my room, Pelham." The boy followed, a sick feeling at his stomach.
His father twisted a hand within Pelham's shirt-collar, and snapped off his own belt. The loose end of the belt danced and stung against the boy's bare legs. His father's words came to him brokenly and explosively. "Pay no attention to what I say.... Your confounded negligence.... Continually soldiering on me. You're mean as gar-broth."
By this, Pell gave way entirely. The agonizing pain burnt his bare calves, and radiated up his legs. He punctuated the blows with sobbing explanations, and promises never to let it happen again. At the intensity of the pain, he tried to intercept the blows with his hands. Half of the time the lashings left red welts on his wrists and arms, and one stroke caught a little finger, twisting it back until he was sure it was broken.
"I'll teach you to impose on your father.... You won't obey me, will you?..."
At last it was over, and Pelham crumpled, sobbing and shuddering, against the footboard of the bed.
"Go down to the chicken-house, and attend to your work," his father ordered him. Paul Judson, torn with anger and self-disgust, turned back to the boy. "I'm going to thrash you every morning for a month. Maybe that will do you some good."
After a few minutes, gulping down the stinging memories and black bitterness against what he felt was rank injustice, Pelham limped out to his duties. As he watered the hens, and scattered cracked corn before the fuzzy yellow balls scratching around them, waves of self-pity flooded him. He wept into the chicken-trough and into his handkerchief, until it was a damp salt-smelly wad.