“Aren’t you about——”
Elizabeth looked up at him as he started to speak, and Jack’s finger shot out to the forbidden wheel on the instant. Elizabeth saw it at a point when she could not control the pedal with her foot. Mother love brought a scream to her lips, and to save the child she gave him a shove with her hand. Jack fell on the floor in a heap, striking his head on the bedpost as he did so.
John had clutched at him ineffectually as he fell and caught him up as soon as he could get hold of him, turning him over in his arms to see where he was hurt. The blood spurted from the little nose, giving an appearance of serious injury to the matter all out of proportion to the exact nature of the damage sustained, but as usual, when excited, John saw only surface indications.
“What does possess you when you’re cross?” he exclaimed as he relinquished his hold on the baby, who, however badly he might be hurt, was struggling to get to his mother’s arms.
Elizabeth carried the screaming child to the kitchen to bathe the bruised nose and apply a wet cloth to the nasty blue ridge beginning to form where the little cheek had encountered the bedpost.
“I never saw any one act like you do with a child,” John said with his usual irritation.
“I didn’t intend to knock him over, but I couldn’t stop my foot and I thought he’d get his little finger taken right off before my very eyes.”
“Well, you shouldn’t go at him so rough. You always treat him as if he were a block of wood.”
Elizabeth’s lips closed down tight, and to keep Jack from hearing further criticisms of her management she went back to the bedroom. When John was ready to go he called to her from the lane, and she carried Jack to the door instead of laying him down.
“Take Hepsie with you. Tell Mrs. Chamberlain that I got ready to come. He’d probably be cross if I went now. Hepsie’s in the potato patch,” Elizabeth said in a low voice, and went back so promptly that John could not reply.