Tom drew back from his adversary, for the war-fire which Pete had lit in him was nearly burned out, and his regular nature was coming back to smooth over the volcanic outburst which had transformed him for the time being.
“Hope I don’t look like that,” was his first thought, as he gazed down at Pete’s face as if it were a newly-silvered mirror, and in it saw a reflection of his own. But as he looked it was dimly, and he felt that his eyes must be all swollen up, his lips cut against his teeth, his cheeks puffy, and his nose—
“Ugh!” ejaculated Tom; “how disgusting!”
He put up his hands to his face as the above thought came into his head, and then shuddered with dismay.
There was no mistake about it, for he knew that if anything he was in a worse plight than the blubbering young ruffian before him. His hands, too: not only were they sadly smeared and stained, but the skin was off his knuckles, and now, as if all at once, he began to tingle, smart, and ache all over, while a horrible feeling of repentance came over him, and regret for what had happened.
“What a brute I must look!” he thought; and then, “How terribly I have knocked him about!”
Then with the feelings of regret and compunction, he began to wonder whether Pete was seriously hurt.
“Can’t be,” he thought the next minute; “he makes too much noise,” and he recalled the howlings when the explosion took place at the mill.
“He’s thoroughly beaten,” Tom said to himself, as he dabbed his bleeding face and knuckles, growing more sore and stiff minute by minute.
“This is a rum way of trying to make friends, and to improve him,” he thought dismally, as he went on. “Oh dear, what a mess I’m in!”