While this talk was going on among the children Mrs. Coote had gone down to the study, where she found her husband striding angrily to and fro. He glanced at his wife as she came in and read scorn and contempt in the look she gave him.
“So you, I see, are ready to uphold that young rascal in his wrongdoing; and the meddlesome neighbors who come interfering here, as well,” he said wrathfully.
“The neighbors were perfectly right,” she answered in an icy tone, “and I’m not at all sure they haven’t saved you from murder and the hangman’s rope. That’s what your awful temper will bring you to some of these days, if you don’t learn to exercise some self-control.”
She paused for an instant, then went on in a tone of stern determination: “And I warn you to beware how you lay a hand on one of those orphan children again; for as sure as you do I’ll let the uncles know all about this thing, and they’ll be promptly taken away out of your reach, inhuman brute that you are.”
“Take care how you talk, woman,” he said menacingly, though his cheek paled at her threat. “I’m the stronger of the two, and you may live to regret it.”
“The stronger, but by far the more cowardly,” she returned with a disagreeable laugh. “I’m not afraid o’ you, Patrick Coote; you’re too well aware of my worth to you to try doing me any deadly harm.”
“Deadly harm?” he repeated, “who talks of deadly harm? ’Twas you that said it, not I. But I’ll have you, as well as those unruly youngsters, to know who’s master in this house.”
So saying he took up his hat and walked out through the front yard and down the street, Mrs. Coote standing at the window and sending after him a glance of mingled contempt and disdain.
“I haven’t wasted any fondling on those children,” she said to herself, “but I’d sooner take a beating myself than give that bit of a boy such a thrashing for next to nothing, and I’ll see that it isn’t done again.”
Mr. Coote stalked on down the street in by no means a happy frame of mind, everybody he met seeming to him to regard him with contempt and aversion; for the whole neighborhood was roused by the story of his abuse of the little orphan boy unfortunately committed to his care—a story quickly circulated by those who had heard Harry’s screams and rushed to the house to discover the cause and aid the sufferer.