“Clinton! Clinton!” cried mother. “What have you done?”
Her question cut me to the quick. It showed me how deeply she had been impressed by Mr. Downes’ calumnies. Her first thought was that I was at fault—that I had been the aggressor.
“You can see what I have done to him,” said I, a little sullenly, I fear. “We got into a row on the boat coming in, and that is how he came by his bruises. But I tied him up because I didn’t fancy being slit up like a codfish with this thing,” and I drew the claspknife—a regular sailor’s “gully”—from my coat pocket and tossed it, open, upon the table.
Mother screamed and shuddered, and sank back into her chair again.
“You needn’t be scared,” I said, more tenderly, crossing to her side and putting my arm across her shoulders. “I’m not hurt at all. He only slit my coat sleeve!”
Mr. Downes glanced from his son’s swollen and disfigured face to my flapping coatsleeve, and fear came into his own countenance. He knew something about the ungovernable rages into which Paul frequently flew. He was obliged to wet his lips with his tongue before he could speak:
“You will not believe this horrible, scandalous story, Mary! Why—why—The boy is beside himself!”
“I think Paul was,” I said, gravely. “We were both angry—I admit that. But I used nothing but my fists on him.”
“Paul! Why don’t you speak up and deny this charge?”
“I—I never struck him with the knife,” said my cousin, sullenly. “He—he tied my arms and then he—he slit the coat himself. I—I never touched him.”