He took from his pocket a little case, which held his pocket-comb, a dandified affair with a small looking-glass, which he held before her eyes.
Evila reddened over face and neck when she saw the disfiguring marks of her lover's affection. She spoke with some anger in her voice—
"Sir, you have been very kind, and I will tell you all about it. I have a little brother who is a cripple. As soon as father died mother married again. Her husband was a drunkard, and when he was tipsy he would beat us and tear my hair. Once he threw my brother, who was only three years old, down a height, and since then he has been crippled. His bones are bent and weak, and he has to go on crutches; his breath, too, is affected; he can hardly breathe from asthma, and this was stepfather's doing. But that did not soften him; on the contrary, he persecuted the poor baby, and it was ten times worse after mother died. How many blows I have had to bear, and glad I was to get them if I could only spare the child! At last stepfather fell from the shaft; he was drunk, and he broke his neck. A good thing it was, too; and since then we have lived alone, and what I earn does for us both. But now I am going to marry Peter, and Peter hates my poor crippled brother. He says he must go out and beg; that an object like him on crutches could stand at the church-door on Sundays, and in the market on week-days, and get pence enough to support himself. Oh, it is shameful of him! And to-day we had a quarrel about it. He came to take me to church, where we were to be called for the third time. I was nearly ready, but I said I should first give my little brother some warm milk, and I went to fetch it. The boy was sitting on the doorstep waiting for it.
"'Warm milk!' cried Peter, in a rage. 'I will give him what will make him fat!' and then he struck the child and tore at his ear as if he would tear it from his head. The child has a peculiarity—strange for a child—he never cries, although you might beat him to death. He opens his eyes and his mouth, but says nothing, and gives out no sound. I implored Peter to let the poor thing alone, for I loved him. This set him in a horrible rage.
"'Then let the dwarf go packing!' he screamed. 'Give him a beggar's wallet, and let him beg from door to door; there never was a more unsightly cripple than he is, so let him bring home something for his keep, the scarecrow!'"
The tears ran down the girl's face as she told this.
"How can he help being so ugly and deformed?" she went on. "It was not God who made him so, it was stepfather; and so I told Peter, and that I would rather he would beat me than that he should touch the child.
"'And I will beat you,' he said, 'if you say another word'; and then he seized hold of the child and kicked him. 'Get out of my sight, you little monster of ugliness!' he said. 'Go to the church-door and beg, or I will eat you.' And he made such a horrible face that my poor little brother shrieked with fright. I could not stand seeing him tortured in this way. I took him from him, and would have covered him up in my arms, but he ran and hid himself in the chimney. I was very angry.
"'If you torment him like this,' I said, 'I shall break with you.'
"Then he seized me by my hair and fell to beating me, as you saw. Now he will do it every day."