“Then I will!” said Adna, and he roared with ferocity, “Come here to me, you!”
He put out his hand like a claw, and Kedzie retreated from him. She stopped sobbing. She had never been so frightened. She felt a new kind of fright, the fright of a nun at seeing an altar threatened with desecration. She had not been whipped for years. She had grown past that. Surely her body was sacred from such infamy now.
“Come here to me, I tell you!” Adna snarled, as he pursued her slowly around the chairs.
“You better not whip me, poppa,” Kedzie mumbled. “You better not touch me, I tell you. You'll be sorry if you do! You better not!”
“Come here to me!” said Adna.
“Momma, momma, don't let him!” Kedzie whispered as she ran to her mother and flung herself in her arms for refuge.
Mrs. Thropp then lost a great opportunity forever. She tore the girl's hands away and handed her over to her father. And he, with ugly fury and ugly gesture, seized the young woman who had been his child and dragged her to him and sank into a chair and wrenched and twisted her arms till he held her prone across his knees. Then he spanked her with the flat of his hand.
Kedzie made one little outcry; then there was no sound but the thump of the blows. Adna sickened soon of his task, and Kedzie's silence and non-resistance robbed him of excuse. He growled:
“I guess that'll learn you who's boss round here.”
He thrust her from his knees, and she rolled off to the floor and lay still. She had not really swooned, but her soul had felt the need of withdrawing into itself to ponder this awful sacrilege.