"Your Betsy Beauty is a wicked devil, and I wouldn't trust but she'll burn in hell!"
Never, to the last hour of my life, shall I forget the effect of that pronouncement. One moment Aunt Bridget stood speechless in the middle of the stairs, as if all breath had been broken out of her. Then, ghastly white and without a word, she came flying up at me, and, before I could recover my usual refuge, she caught me, slapped me on the cheek and boxed both my ears.
I do not remember if I cried, but I know my mother did, and that in the midst of the general tumult my father came out of his room and demanded in a loud voice, which seemed to shake the whole house, to be told what was going on.
Aunt Bridget told him, with various embellishments, which my mother did not attempt to correct, and then, knowing she was in the wrong, she began to wipe her eyes with her wet handkerchief, and to say she could not live any longer where a child was encouraged to insult her.
"I have to leave this house—I have to leave it to-morrow," she said.
"You don't have to do no such thing," cried my father. "But I'm just crazy to see if a man can't be captain in his own claim. These children must go to school. They must all go—the darned lot of 'em."
SIXTH CHAPTER
Before I speak of what happened at school, I must say how and when I first became known to the doctor's boy.
It was during the previous Christmastide. On Christmas Eve I awoke in the dead of night with the sense of awakening in another world. The church-bells were ringing, and there was singing outside our house, under the window of my mother's room. After listening for a little while I made my voice as soft as I could and said: