Taking the child’s hand she led him a little way, but finding he was hardly able to stand or move, she lifted him in her arms and carried him up the stairs to the children’s room, the others following. Laying him on his bed she went from the room, to return almost immediately with a basin of warm water and some soothing ointment, with which she proceeded to make the poor little fellow as comfortable as possible, undressing him and laying him in his little bed again, handling him almost as tenderly as though he had been her own, though she said very little, leaving the children in some doubt whether she did or did not approve of her husband’s barbarous treatment.
“I’m going down now,” she said when she had finished. “You needn’t have any more lessons to-day, any of you. I think it would be as well for you girls to stay here with Harry. You may play, sleep, or do whatever you please so that you don’t get into mischief or make a racket that can be heard down in the study.”
“Yes, ma’am, thank you,” returned Ethel, “we’ll be quiet as mice and as good as we know how.”
Mrs. Coote had hardly gone when the little boy raised himself in the bed and looking with tearful eyes at his sisters grouped together beside him:
“I’ll be a man some o’ these days,” he sobbed, “and then if I don’t take that old rascal down and beat him harder’n he beat me to-day—it—it’ll be queer. Yes, I’ll just thrash him till he can’t move, so I will.”
“I couldn’t feel sorry for him, I couldn’t,” sobbed Ethel, “but, O Harry, dear, we must try to forgive him; because the Bible says, ‘Forgive your enemies. Forgive and ye shall be forgiven.’ And we all need to have forgiveness from God. So we will ask our Heavenly Father to help us to forgive this cruel, cruel man, and to help us to get away from him so that he can’t ever hurt us any more.”
“Yes,” said Harry, “after he’s had one good, sound thrashing from me. I just ache to give it to him, and I will, just as soon as I’m big enough.”
“Maybe God will punish him before that,” sobbed Blanche. “I’m sure I hope so.”
“Me too,” said Nannette, wiping her tearful eyes. “I’ll ask God to punish the naughty man every time I say my prayers.”
“Oh, no,” said Ethel persuasively; “instead of that let’s all ask Him to take us away from here and put us in a good home where we’ll never see these cruel people any more.”