“Mischief!” mimicked Aaron angrily. “That’s just the trouble with you folks. You excuse everything because it’s simply ‘mischief.’ Why don’t you call it crime?”
“Now, Aaron, that’s too much,” cried Mrs. Rushton, bristling in defence of her offspring. “It was an awful thing to do, of course, but Teddy didn’t realize—” then, seeing the retort trembling on Aaron’s lips, she went on hastily: “But go right up to your room now, and get a bath and change your clothes. Mansfield will get you some things of his to put on, and I’ll have supper waiting for you when you come down.”
And Aaron, still rumbling like a volcano, was led to the upper regions, where the splashing of water shortly after told of a bath more grateful than the involuntary one he had taken an hour before.
Mrs. Rushton, with tears in her eyes, turned to Fred, in the lower hall.
“It’s just awful,” she said. “Tell me, Fred, dear, how it all happened.”
“Uncle Aaron makes too much of it, Mother!” exclaimed Fred, who had had all he could do to keep still during his uncle’s tirade. “Of course, it might have been a bad accident. But you know just as well as I do that Teddy wouldn’t have done it for all the world, if he had thought anybody would get hurt. The boys were teasing him about hitting the ball straight, and, as luck would have it, Jed’s team came along just that minute. It just struck Teddy that here was something to aim at, and he let fly. Of course, there was only one chance out of ten of hitting the horse at all, and, even if it had hit him, it might have only made him jump, and that would have been the end of it. But everything went wrong, and the team ran away. Nobody felt worse about it than Teddy. If you’d seen how white he looked—”
“Poor boy!” murmured Mrs. Rushton softly. Then, recollecting herself, she said a little confusedly: “Poor Uncle Aaron, I mean. It must have been a terrible shock to him. Think what a blow it would have been to all of us, if he had been killed!”
“Sure, it would!” assented Fred, though his voice lacked conviction. “But he wasn’t, and there’s no use of his being so grouchy over it. He ought to be so glad to be alive that he’d be willing to let up on Teddy. I suppose that all the time he’s here now he’ll keep going on like a human phonograph.”
“You mustn’t speak about your uncle that way, Fred,” said his mother reprovingly. “He’s had a great deal to try his temper, and Teddy is very much to blame. He must be punished. Yes, he certainly must be punished.”
“There’s one thing, too, Mother,” went on Fred, determined to put his brother in the best light possible, “Ted might have lied out of it, but he didn’t. Uncle Aaron put the question to the boys straight, or rather he was just going to do it, when Teddy spoke up and owned that he was the one who hit the ball.”