"I guess you want taking down a peg, my college gentleman. Perhaps you don't know I'm master till you're twenty-one," and he reached down a large leather strap.
"You strike me if you dare," shouted the boy.
"If I dare! haw! haw! If I don't cut the cussed nonsense out of yer this morning, then I never did," and he took an angry stride toward his son, who sprang behind the stove.
The wife and mother had stood by growing whiter and whiter, and with lips pressed closely together. At this critical moment she stepped before her infuriated husband and seized his arm, exclaiming:
"John, take care. You have reached the end."
"Stand aside," snarled the man, raising the strap, "or I'll give you a taste of it, too."
The woman's grasp tightened on his arm, and in a voice that made him pause and look fixedly at her, she said:
"If you strike me or that boy I'll take my children and we will leave your roof this hateful day never to return."
"Hain't I to be master in my own house?" said the husband sullenly.
"You are not to be a brute in your own house. I know you've struck me before, but I endured it and said nothing about it because you were drunk, but you are not drunk now, and if you lay a finger on me or my son to-day, I will never darken your doors again."