“Fred,” cried John, flinging away the knife, his eyes filling with tears, “I can’t bear to hurt you so.”
“Father’ll hurt me worse; he’ll rip it right out, and lick me into the bargain.”
“There’s a file in the canoe, they have to sharpen hooks; perhaps I can file it off.”
“Do, John; do.”
Just as the voices of the children were heard going home from school, John succeeded in filing it off. Fred jumped up, his mouth full of gravel, where he had bitten the beach in his agony, and ran home. He didn’t sleep much that night. The sawing of the flesh with a dull knife produced irritation, and by morning it began to fester. It hurt him to walk, it hurt him to move, and it hurt him to sit still. All day long he sat on the edge of his seat, and didn’t go out at recess to play. When he got home, he found his cousin John Ryan had come to spend the night. As he was a general favorite, the children all wanted him to sit next them at the table. They were all standing up around the table, wrangling about it, when the miller, who had a grist to grind before dark, and was in a hurry for his supper, lost all patience.
“Down with you—will you, somewhere?” cried he to Fred; “you’re big enough to behave,” and pushed him slap down into a chair.
“O!” screamed Fred, jumping upright, bursting into tears, and clapping both hands to the aggrieved part.
It all came out now; but in consideration of what he had suffered, and had yet to undergo, he escaped a whipping. His mother bound some of the marrow of a hog’s jaw on the wound, and, after a while, the hook came out.
Fred promised John Rhines solemnly that he not only would never play truant again, but in all respects try to become a better boy; yet the wound was scarcely healed before he was again engaged in mischief.
Captain Rhines had a fish-flake on the beach, just above high-water mark. Uncle Isaac had been making fish on it, and they were nearly cured.