“Humph! thee’ll live!” replied Aunt Ruth.
“Live? Why shouldn’t I?” demanded Melville.
“Thee has just had a pretty serious thrashing, and, I fancy, the first one of thy experience. Little Fritz must have hit thy temple, for I see it is discolored. The blow in that particular place was what made thee faint, I suppose.”
“Now will you insist upon keeping him here?”
“Certainly.”
“A boy as dangerous as that?”
“Melville Capers, I am ashamed of thee! Even if thee is an invalid it is no reason why thee should be a coward! It does not seem as if there could be one drop of Kinsolving blood in thy veins.”
Melville was still weak, and he was too utterly astonished at his aunt’s indignation to reply. He lay staring at her until a well-known step was heard in the passage and Grandmother Capers came into the room. Then ensued the customary roar with which the cripple expressed his disapprobation of things in general and of this latest grievance in especial.
“Boohoo! Row row-wow-ow!” No written word can convey the sound; it made quick-tempered Ruth think of nothing but an angry calf, and the pity which had sprung up in her heart gave way to disgust.
So it was with a very contemptuous expression on her fair face that she re-entered the supper-room, where Grandmother Kinsolving sat trembling, and herself on the verge of fainting, while the younger ones had grouped themselves about Uncle Fritz and his sobbing burden.