“Martin,” he cried, “come this instant and have your wounds washed and bound up. You are losing a great deal of blood, and that brute’s claws may have been venomous.”
The boy obeyed at once. He presented a sorry spectacle. His arms and hands were bathed in blood and his clothes were splashed with it.
Elsie Herbert’s eyes filled with tears.
“This is nothing,” he said to cheer her. “They’re only scratches, but they look bad.”
As a matter of fact, he did not realize until long afterwards that were it not for the fortunate accident which deprived the cat of her off foreleg, some of the tendons of his right wrist might have been severed. From the manner in which he held her she could not get the effective claws to bear crosswise.
The vicar looked grave when a first dip in the brook revealed the extent of the boy’s injuries.
“You are plucky enough to bear the application of a little brine, Martin?” he said.
Suiting the action to the word, he emptied the contents of a paper of salt into a teacup and dissolved it in hot water. Then he washed the wounds again in the brook and bound them with handkerchiefs soaked in the mixture. It was a rough-and-ready cauterization, and the pain made Martin white, but later on it earned the commendation of the doctor. Mr. Herbert was pallid himself when Elsie handed him the last handkerchief they could muster, while Mrs. Johnson was already tearing the tablecloth into strips.
“It is bad enough to have your wrists scored in this way, my lad,” he murmured, “but it will be some consolation for you to know that otherwise these cuts would have been in my little girl’s face, perhaps her eyes—great Heaven!—her eyes!”