"Oh, my, yes! Mammy did when I was little. I'm too big now."
"I'm too big, too, now, ain't I?"
"I don't know," said Peggy. "Wulf Greiner was licked by teacher, and he's thirteen. It's whether it's mighty bad, you know."
Johnny-Ivan caught his breath and his legs shook under him; the horror of his father's "licking" him came over him cold; it was not the pain; he had never minded Hilma's sturdy blows and he had let Michael cut a splinter out of his thumb with a pocket-knife, and never whimpered; it was the ignominy, the unknown terror of his father's wrath that looked awful to him. As he looked down the crowded room and suddenly beheld Winslow's face bent gravely over Miss Hopkins, who was talking earnestly, he could hardly move his feet. Yet he had no thought of wavering. "I got to tell," he said, and walked as fast as he could, with his white face, straight to the group.
Winslow looked down and saw the two children; and one could discover the signals of calamity in their faces: Peggy's a fine scarlet and Johnny-Ivan's grayish-white.
"What's the matter, Johnny?" asked Winslow.
Johnny's eyelids were glued tight—just as they were when he pulled Peggy's tooth—he blurted everything out breathlessly: "I've done something awful, papa! It'll cost thousands of dollars."
Emma Hopkins had considered Winslow an unattractive man, of a harsh visage, but now, as he looked at his little son, she changed her mind.
"What did you do, son?" said he quietly; his hand found Johnny's brown curls and lay on them a second.
"He didn't do it, really; it was me," Peggy broke in, too agitated for grammar. "I was playing with the little tricks on the table, the models, sah, and I was making the v'losipid run round and he was 'fraid I'd break it; but I did it, really, sah."