“Where did you get it?”
“Fight. Fellow stuck his thumb in it.”
Ned wished that his mother would let him alone; but she would not.
“The very idea! Whom did you have a fight with?”
“Big Mike Farr—and I’d have licked him only they all jumped onto me.”
“Come here and let me look at it,” bade his mother, aghast.
Ned approached, sheepish in mien, yet determined to stick up for himself in case she took him to task.
But she did not. She stood him by the sink, and while she treated his wound with homely remedies, applied by soft touch, she let him tell his battle-story. And when his story and his treatment had been finished together, and he had emerged with a huge bandage encircling his crown like a turban, she only sighed:
“Oh, Neddie! Why will boys fight!”
“Indeed, ma’am, an’ I for one am mighty glad that he wor havin’ the best of that Mike Farr,” blurted Maggie, who had been listening with approval. “Sure, Mike Farr is nothin’ but a coward an’ a blow. I know him; I know him well, bad cess to him.”