“I—I don’t believe it,” said Lucile stoutly.
“It is true.”
“If it is true, you have no right to abuse her—you are not fit to be any child’s mother.”
“Not fit,” the woman’s face became purple with rage. “I am no good, she says; not fit!” She advanced threateningly toward Lucile.
“Now, now,” she stormed, “we have you where we want you. Now we shall show you whether or not we can do as we please with the child that was so very kindly given to us.” She made a move toward the stove, from which the handle to the heavy poker protruded. By this time the end must be red hot.
“It’s no use to threaten me,” said Lucile calmly. “I wouldn’t leave the room if I might. If I did it would be to bring an officer. I mean to see that the child is treated as a human being and not as a dog.”
The woman’s face once more became purple. She seemed petrified, quite unable to move, from sheer rage.
But the man, a sallow-complexioned person with a perpetual leer in one corner of his mouth, started for the stove.
With a quick spring Lucile reached the handle of the poker first. Seizing it, she drew it, white hot, from the fire. The man sprang back in fear. The woman gripped the rounds of a heavy chair and made as if to lift it for a blow.
Scarcely realizing that she was imitating her hero of fiction, she brought the glowing iron close to the white and tender flesh of her forearm.