“Isn’t that enough?” he asked in a breathless sort of tone.
“Two more,” was all the answer, and he gave them, hardly seeing where they fell, then threw the rule all across the room, and hugging the kind hand in both his own, laid his face down on it sobbing out in a passion of love, and shame, and penitence,—
“I will remember! Oh! I will!”
Then Mr. Bhaer put an arm about him, and said in a tone as compassionate as it had just now been firm,—
“I think you will. Ask the dear God to help you, and try to spare us both another scene like this.”
Tommy saw no more, for he crept back to the hall, looking so excited and sober that the boys crowded round him to ask what was being done to Nat.
In a most impressive whisper Tommy told them, and they looked as if the sky was about to fall, for this reversing the order of things almost took their breath away.
“He made me do the same thing once,” said Emil, as if confessing a crime of the deepest dye.
“And you hit him? dear old Father Bhaer? By thunder, I’d just like to see you do it now!” said Ned, collaring Emil in a fit of righteous wrath.
“It was ever so long ago. I’d rather have my head cut off than do it now,” and Emil mildly laid Ned on his back instead of cuffing him, as he would have felt it his duty to do on any less solemn occasion.