As Tim Ruggles sat over his work with a shudder running through his frame, there rang out, at last, in thrilling tones—
“Oh! oh! oh! please not this time—not this time. Oh! don’t beat me.” Now louder, now half smothered, till Tim twisted, and shuffled, and writhed as if the blows so plainly to be heard were falling upon his own shoulders; each stroke making him wince more sharply, while his face grew so puckered and lined as to be hardly recognisable.
“I can’t stand it,” he groaned at last; and then he gave a start, for he had inadvertently placed his hand upon his hot iron.
Then came again the anguished appeal for pardon, accompanied by cry after cry that seemed to have burst forth in spite of the utterer’s efforts to crush them down, till Tim, as he listened to the wailing voice, the whistling of stick or cane, and the dull thud of falling blows, seemed to shrink into himself as he turned his back to the sounds, stopped his ears with his finger and a wet sponge, and then sat crouched together regardless of trickling water making its way within his shirt-collar.
At last the cries ceased, and the silence was only broken by an occasional suppressed sob; but Tim moved not, though the door opened, and from the inner room came a tall, hard, angular woman, rigid as the old whalebone umbrella rib she held in one hand, leading, or rather dragging in a child with the other. She was a woman of about forty, such as in a higher class of life would have been gifted with a mission, and let people know of the fact. As it was, she was but a tailor’s wife with a stiff neck: not the stiff neck of a cold which calls for hartshorn, friction, and flannel, but a natural rigidity which caused her to come round as upon a pivot when turning to address a speaker, at a time when with other people a movement of the head would have sufficed.
“Tim!” she cried, as she stepped into the room, opening and closing her cruel-looking mouth with a snap.
Tim heard the meaning cry, and, starting quickly, the next moment he was busily at work as if nothing had happened.
Mrs Ruggles said no more, but proceeded to place her whalebone rod upon a perch over the fire-place. Her back was turned while doing this, a fact of which Tim took advantage to kiss his hand to the cowering child, when, save at distant intervals, she ceased to sob.
“I don’t think you need beat poor Pine so,” said Tim at last, in a hesitating way, “What was it for?”
“Come here,” shouted Mrs Ruggles to the child; “what did I whip you for?”