Melville’s laugh, saying this, was harsh, but that Mrs. Capers did not observe. She only knew that Melville laughed. She was ready to do anything he asked of her. So she followed after the child, who slowly retreated, and bent her face to touch his.
“Kiss me, little man. Come, kiss me good-morning.”
Kiss the “Witch of Endor!” It was dreadful enough to know she really lived, and right here in his own grandmother’s house; but—kiss her! Before the horror of that rite the stalwart soul of the “little man” appeared to die within him. He tried to retreat still farther, and found himself prevented by the barrier of a wall. He darted his terrified glance this way and that for some way of escape, but the pale morning light showed nothing clearly. Else would the still bright eyes of Grandmother Capers have seen what they did not see, that the child’s hesitation was not shyness but fear; and even for Melville’s dear sake she would not have done what she did do.
Fritz felt the frill of her night-cap brush his hair, then her peppermint-scented breath reached his nostrils, and, with a shriek as if all the witches ever known to history were upon him, he struck out in his own defence.
Melville, even, had looked for no such result as this. At the most, he expected to see “a little fun”; but his knowledge of healthy boyhood was slight, and a boy who, small as this one was, had yet pluck enough to protect himself from the aggressions even of “witches” was amazing to him.
Needless to say that poor Mrs. Capers was far more astonished than her grandson, and with a more serious cause. As the first blow of the sturdy little fist fell on her unsuspecting cheek, she started and staggered back. Then came a second blow, and she retreated still farther; but her aged feet caught in the folds of her long gown, and she was thrown violently to the floor.
For a moment chaos reigned.
Fritzy’s fighting blood was up. “St. George and the Dragon” and “Ralph the Lion Killer” were nothing to him. He, who all unarmed and unsuspecting, had met and conquered Uncle Fritz’s “Witch of Endor!” Wouldn’t Fritzy Nunky be a proud and happy man when she should be safely out of the way, and no longer “to pay!” At this thought the whacking blows redoubled, and it was only owing to Grandmother Capers’s well wrapped person that she was not then and there annihilated, as her adversary, forsooth, intended.
Meanwhile, Melville lay helpless on his bed and hollaed. The game had gone to terrifying limits, and he was powerless to stop it, save by his lusty voice; which, for awhile, seemed rather to egg on the small pugilist than to restrain him.
Fortunately for all concerned, Content was also an early riser; and this one morning in especial she had been “up with the lark,” that she might help Aunt Ruth, rightly foreseeing that the sudden invasion of a whole flock of hungry youngsters would make breakfast-getting a task for many hands.