Part 31

She came, one hot July day, and planted herself quite unconcernedly beside the professor, and he, looking down into the funny little round face, beheld a great black-and-blue bump on the forehead. The sight grieved him to the soul, even before he knew its tragic meaning.

"Did you tumble down, Eliza?" he asked with great concern.

"No," said Eliza.

"Did you bump your head agin something?"

"No."

"Did anybody hurt you?" and already the professor was casting wrathful glances from boy to boy, well calculated to strike terror to the heart of the culprit.

"Not much;" said the matter-of-fact little voice.

"I guess 't was her pa done it," spoke up Patsy Linders. "He's a bloomin' terror when he's drunk."

Without a word, Simon rose and led the little creature into the lean-to, where he tenderly bathed the bruise in cold water, giving no voice to the swelling indignation that tore through him. His tone and touch were but the gentler for that, as he sought to soothe the self-contained little victim, who, truth to tell, seemed not much in need of his ministrations.

"My lamb!" he murmured. "My little lamb!"

"Ma said to never mind," the plucky little lamb remarked. "He ain't often so."

"Do you love your father?" asked Simon, seeking to fathom the blue eyes for the truth.

The blue eyes were, for the moment, intent upon a swarm of flies disporting themselves upon the window-pane.

"Do you love your father?" Simon asked again.

"No;" quoth Eliza, "I wish he was dead."

Now Simon Amberley was slow to anger; indeed it may be doubted whether he had ever in all his life before been thoroughly roused; and perhaps for that very reason, the surging flood of indignation, so new to his experience, seemed to him like a call from heaven. All day he fed his wrath on the deeds of Scripture warriors, reading aloud from the sacred records, till Patsy Linders exclaimed, enraptured, that "the Bible was a durned good book, by Jiminy!"

Little Eliza stayed on, as she often did after the school was dispersed, sure that "her Simon," would find some new and agreeable entertainment for her.

"Did your father ever hit you before?" Amberley asked casually, as they strung a handful of painter's-brush into a garland, which it was thought might prove becoming to Simon Jr.'s complexion.

"Yes," said Eliza.

"More than once?"

"Yes."

"Where did he hit you last time?"

"Here." And Eliza pulled up the blue calico sleeve, and displayed a pretty bad bruise on the arm.

Simon paused a moment in his cross-examination.

"And you wish he was dead?" he asked at last, between his set teeth.

"Yes."

"What does he look like?"

"Something like you," was the startling response; "only different."