“No, sir, you ain’t. Just you dare to touch me, that’s all; and what’s more, you ain’t a-going to beat Master Tom, so there now. I wouldn’t stand here and see him punished for what he don’t deserve. It’s all that Mr Sam, who’s ma’s spoilt him, and indulged him, till he’s grown into a nasty, overbearing, cigarette-smoking wretch, as treats servants as if they was the dirt under his feet.”
“Fanny,” cried the lawyer, who felt that he was losing dignity in an unequal struggle, “send this woman down-stairs. Now, sir, you let go of that balustrade and come here.”
“No,” cried Tom, between his teeth; “you shan’t beat me for nothing. It was all Sam.”
“Come here!” roared his uncle, making a savage drag at the boy, which was intercepted by cook forcing herself between, and trying to shelter him.
“You shan’t beat him, not while I’m here,” she cried.
“He is not going to beat him,” said a quiet, firm, grave voice; and all started to see that “the company,” who had been standing quite unobserved on the upper landing, a silent spectator of the scene, was now coming down.
“Oh, Richard!” cried Mrs Brandon; “look here! The wretch—the wretch!”
“Yes, he does look a pretty object certainly,” said the visitor. “Here you, sir, get up and go to your room, and wash yourself. Don’t lie groaning there.”
“Oh—oh—oh!” cried Mrs Brandon, hysterically, “I didn’t mean Sam.”
“If you’d go and stop in the drawing-room, Richard, and not interfere, I should feel obliged.”