“That horrid boy! Knocking me about,” he cried, stopping his howling so as to deliver the words emphatically; and then looking at his stained hands, and bursting into a howl of far greater power than before.
“The wretch! The wretch!” cried Lady Danby. “I always knew it. He has killed my darling.”
At this dire announcement Edgar shook himself free from his mother’s embrace, looked at his hands again, and then in the extremity of horror, threw himself flat upon his back, and shrieked and kicked.
“O my darling, my darling!” cried Lady Danby.
“He isn’t hurt much,” cried Dexter indignantly.
“How dare you, sir!” roared Sir James.
“He’s killed; he’s killed!” cried Lady Danby, clasping her hands, and rocking herself to and fro as she gazed at the shrieking boy, who only wanted a cold sponge and a towel to set him right.
“Ow!” yelled Edgar, as he appreciated the sympathy of his mother, but believed the very worst of his unfortunate condition. The lady now bent over him, said that he was killed, and of course she must have known.
Edgar had never read Uncle Remus. All this was before the period when that book appeared; but his conduct might very well be taken as a type of that of the celebrated Brer Fox when Brer Rabbit was in doubt as to whether he was really dead or only practising a ruse, and proceeded to test his truth by saying, as he saw him stretched out—
“Brer Fox look like he dead, but he don’t do like he dead. Dead fokes hists up de behime leg, en hollers wahoo!”