"You are a good-for-nothing: I will teach you manners, that you do not push little girls who are doing you no harm;" but it sounded in the German language like something very dreadful.
Poor Nelly clung to him with one hand, and tried to stop his beating Rob.
"Oh, please don't whip my brother, sir!" she cried. "He did not mean to hurt the little girl. She was going to snatch my doll away from me."
But the angry German shook Nelly off as if she had been a little fly that lighted on his arm. Rob did not cry out, nor speak a word. He was horribly frightened, but he was too angry to cry. He said afterwards:—
"I thought he was going to kill me; but I just made up my mind I wouldn't speak a single word if he did."
All this that I have been telling you didn't take much more than a minute; but it seemed to poor Nelly a thousand years. She was crying, and the little German girls were crying too: they did not mean to do any harm, and they did not want the little boy whipped. Some rough men and women who were looking on began to laugh, and one man called out:—
"Go it, Dutchy, go it!"
Mr. March, who was just walking up the platform, heard the noise; and, when he looked up to see what it meant, what should he see but his own Rob held away up in the air, in the powerful grip of this tall man, and being soundly cuffed about the ears. Mr. March sprang forward, and, taking hold of Rob with one hand, caught the angry man's uplifted arm in the other.
"Stop, sir," he said; "this is my little boy. What has he done? Leave him to me. What has he done?"
"Nothing, papa," called poor Rob, the tears coming into his eyes at the sight of a protector; "nothing except push that ugly little yellow-haired girl: I guess she is his; she was going to snatch Nell's doll."