Page:Penrod by Booth Tarkington (1914).djvu/94

80 affairs; I'm asking you if you have anything to say which would palliate"

"That's what I'm tryin' to tell you about, Miss Spence," he pleaded,—"if you'd jest only let me. When Aunt Clara and her little baby daughter got to our house last night"

"You say Mrs. Farry is visiting your mother?"

"Yes'm—not just visiting—you see, she had to come. Well of course, little baby Clara, she was so bruised up and mauled, where he'd been hittin' her with his cane"

"You mean that your uncle had done such a thing as that!" exclaimed Miss Spence, suddenly disarmed by this scandal.

"Yes'm, and mamma and Margaret had to sit up all night nursin' little Clara—and Aunt Clara was in such a state somebody had to keep talkin' to her, and there wasn't anybody but me to do it, so I"

"But where was your father?" she cried.

"Ma'am?"

"Where was your father while"

"Oh—papa?" Penrod paused, reflected; then brightened. "Why, he was down at the train, waitin' to see if Uncle John would try to follow 'em and make 'em come home so's he could persecute 'em