LITMIR.BIZ

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to strike me; but this time I caught at the strap and held it with hands and teeth, twisting it round me and holding on while he strove to drag it away.

      My resistance seemed to half madden him as I still held on.

      “Let go, you dog!” he roared, “let go!” but I held on the more tightly; when, beside himself with rage, as a loud knocking came now at the inner door, he caught up a heavy office ruler from the table and struck me so cruel a blow across the head that I staggered backwards, and should have fallen to the floor if the door had not been dashed in and Mary caught me up.

      Chapter Six.

      Under Mary’s Mask

      “You great coward!” she cried in a rage, as, sick, faint, and heavy, and seeing everything now as in a dream, I was lifted in her stout arms.

      “Leave this room, woman!” I heard him say.

      “Yes, and your house too, you wretch?” she retorted; and then I heard no more till I seemed to wake in a heavy, dull, throbbing fashion in the kitchen, where some one seemed to be wetting my head with water smelling very strongly of pickles.

      The place looked as if it was early morning, and the walls, with the dresser, plates, and tureens, and the bright tin dish-covers, seemed to be going round and round, but not regularly, for it was as if they went up and down in a wavy billowy way, and all the time I seemed to feel terribly sick.

      “Oh, if I was a man!” I heard Mary mutter; and then more softly, “There, don’t you cry, Miss Hetty; he ain’t killed. It’s left off bleeding now. You go to your mar’s work-basket and get me a strip of rag. You ain’t got any sticking-plaister, have you?”

      “I’ve got some black court-plaister, Mary.”

      “That’ll do, chucky; go and get it. Poor boy, he has had a beating!” she muttered as I heard Hetty’s steps crossing the kitchen floor.

      “I’m – I’m better now, Mary,” I said faintly; and I tried to rise.

      “No, you ain’t better, neither; and you’ll just lie quite still till your head’s done,” said Mary, in her rough ungracious way. “You needn’t be afraid about him; he’s gone to bed and sent for the doctor, because he pretends he’s so bad, and Mr Emmett the constable is upstairs with him, about going to the magistrates and taking up Mr Wooster for beating him; but he didn’t say nothing about taking his self up for beating you, a great ugly coward! Oh! here you are, are you?”

      “Here’s some clean soft linen and the court-plaister,” I heard Hetty say with a sob.

      “Where’s your mar?” said Mary.

      “Upstairs in papa’s room.”

      “Ho?” ejaculated Mary, “and I hope she’ll stay there. There, don’t you begin a-crying again. Hold his hair back while I put this bit on. There, it’s not going to bleed any more, and you needn’t get shuddering like that at the sight of a little blood. That’s the way. Poor boy, it was enough to knock down a hox. Never mind the wet hair; it’s only vinegar and water. That’s the way; we’ll soon strap it up. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Miss Hetty, but your par’s a brute.”

      “Oh, Mary! I won’t stop in the kitchen if you say such things,” cried Hetty, stamping her little foot.

      “Then you’d better go back into the parlour, my dear, for I shall say what I like in my own kitchen; so there now.”

      “It’s very cruel and unkind of you, Mary.”

      “And it’s very cruel and unkind of your par to keep this poor boy half-starved in that orfis.”

      “He did not, Mary. I’m sure papa would not do such a thing.”

      “And that’s why you go without half your dinner, and then take and put it in Antony’s desk.”

      “Mary!”

      “Ah, you may Mary as long as you like, but I’ve seen you do it.”

      “Hush! pray don’t, Mary; he’ll hear you.”

      “Not he, my dear. Poor boy! he’s dropped off asleep, and the best thing too. You’re asleep, aren’t you?”

      I tried to answer “No,” but the faint deathly feeling came over me again as strongly as ever, and all seemed dark and silent once more.

      It was getting dark when I awoke; for, from fainting, I must have lapsed into a heavy sleep, the result of exhaustion and the shock. My head ached, and I was very stiff and in great pain as I tried to raise myself from the pillow which propped me up in the great Windsor chair. Mary was seated opposite to me, crooning some ditty in a low voice as she sat sewing, the needle clicking against her thimble as she thrust it through the work.

      The fire was burning brightly, the tea-things on the table, the pot on the hob, and some buttered toast upon the fender.

      As I was gazing at her, and noticing the play of the flames over her red and rugged countenance, she suddenly raised her eyes, gazed full at me, and the harsh repulsive look passed away as she showed a set of white teeth in a pleasant smile, and rose and came to me, bending down and laying her hand upon my burning forehead.

      “You won’t want no doctor,” she said; and to my utter astonishment she bent lower, kissed me, and then softly patted my cheek. “Poor boy,” she said, “it was a shame!”

      I gazed up piteously and wildly, I believe, in her face, for it was so strange. She had always been so rough and harsh towards me, and her frequent donations of bread and butter seemed to have been given to me more out of spite to her employers than out of kindness to me; but now it was plain enough that under her rugged crust she possessed a true woman’s nature, and the ill-treatment I had received had completely made her my friend.

      “I’ve been waiting all this time for you to wake and have tea,” she said, placing the pot and the toast on the table. “Now then, see if you can’t sit up and have some.”

      “I couldn’t drink any, thank you,” I said faintly.

      “Such stuff and nonsense! It’s quite fresh, and I’ve put in some extra as Miss Hetty give me. Come now, sit up and try, there’s a dear.”

      I tried to sit up, but the pain was so great that I sank back, having hard work not to cry out; and seeing this, with a tenderness for which I should not have given her credit, she gently raised me and backed the pillows up, so as to support me; and then, finding that this was not sufficient, she ran out of the kitchen, to return in a few minutes, doubling up what I knew was her best shawl, which she now formed into a cushion.

      “There, now we shall do,” she said cheerily; and, pouring out a cup of tea, she tasted and added milk till it was to her liking, and then held it to my lips.

      It was like nectar, and I gave her a grateful look for that which seemed to impart new life to my bruised body.

      “Now, you’ve got to eat some toast,” she said, and I stared at her in wonder, for it seemed to be a new Mary upon whom I gazed.

      “I couldn’t eat a bit,” I said helplessly.

      “But you must,” she said imperatively. “Now look here, you have had hardly anything since breakfast, and if you don’t eat, you can’t get well.”

      I took the toast she held to me, and managed to eat it. That done, I had another cup of tea, and the sickly faint feeling I had had every time I moved seemed less overpowering; and at last I lay back there, listening helplessly to Mary as she chatted to me and washed up the tea-things.

      “Don’t you trouble about them; they won’t come in my kitchen. He’s ill in bed, or pretending to be, and the doctor says he ain’t to move for a week. I hope he mayn’t for a month – a brute! I never see such a cowardly trick. I wish my William had him. He’s going to have the law of Mr Wooster, so Mr Emmett the constable told me; and him and the doctor’ll make out a nice case between ’em, I know. Pah! I hate lawyers and doctors. So you make yourself comfortable. I’ll be your doctor, and if they ain’t pretty civil to

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