It was a long time before I perceived any connection between our chase of the redoubtable Cad Prog up Side Street yesterday and my lying here bruised and in a darkened room to-day. At last I supposed Mr Prog must have conquered me; whereat I fired up again, and said, “Did the other fellows finish him up?”
“Oh, dear me, yes,” said the terrified nurse; “all up, every bit—there now—and asked for more!”
This consoled me. Presently a doctor came and looked at my forehead, and left some powders, which I heard him say I was to take in jam three times a day. I felt still more consoled.
In fact, reader, as you will have judged, I was a little damaged by the adventure in Side Street, and the noble exploit of my companions and myself had not ended all in glory.
A day or two after, when I got better, I found out more about it, and rather painfully too, because my uncle landed one day in my bedroom and commenced strongly to arraign me before him.
He bade me tell him what had happened, which I did as well as I could. At the end of it he said, “I suppose you are not aware that for a day or two it was uncertain whether you had not killed that child that was in the room?”
“I?” I exclaimed. “I never touched her! Indeed I didn’t, uncle!”
“You knocked over the cradle,” said my uncle, “and that’s much the same thing.”
I was silent. My uncle proceeded.
“And I suppose you are not aware that the barber who tried to take you down the stairs is now in the hospital with an abscess on his leg, the result of the kick you gave him?”