At length a change came suddenly to the little orphans. One unfortunate
day Mr. Coote was in an unusually bad humor, and under a very slight
provocation from Harry, who was more inclined for play than study, the
weather being warm and fields and garden seeming far more inviting than
books, he flew at the child in a rage and gave him a most unmerciful
beating; making it all the more severe because the little fellow
screamed so loudly that more than one neighbor came running to enquire
what was wrong with the child, supposing some dreadful accident had
befallen him, and Ethel, Blanche, and Nannette, lingering in the hall
without, wept and sobbed as if their hearts would break.
“Stop beating that little fellow! stop this instant, you inhuman wretch,
or I’ll go for a policeman and have you arrested for cruelty to
children,” exclaimed a very decent looking woman, the wife of the grocer
at the next corner, rushing up to the window of the room where the
beating was going on.
“You mind your own business,” retorted Coote, letting go the child and
pushing him angrily away from him. “He’s had no more than he deserves;
no, nor half so much, the idle, good-for-nothing little rascal.”
“I only wish I had the strength to give you your deserts,” returned the
woman in indignant tones. “I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute, and you’d
find yourself good for nothing but bed for at least a week. The idea of
such a wretch as you calling himself a Christian! You’re worse than a
heathen; and I declare I will have you arrested if you dare to strike
that child again.”
Coote tossed his whip into a corner and glared at the woman, while poor
little Harry slunk away out the room, moving as if he had scarcely
strength to walk.
His sisters instantly gathered about him, crying bitterly. Ethel caught
him in her arms and held him close, sobbing out her grief and pity.
“O Harry, Harry, dear little brother, I am so, so, _so_ sorry for you!”
“I, too,” sobbed Blanche. “Oh, I wish our uncles would take us away and
put us with somebody that would be kind and good to us.”
“So do I,” chimed in Nannette, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Oh, I
wish, we could live with Mrs. Keith and little Mary; if only they wanted
more children over there.”
“Oh, hush, hush, Nan,” said Ethel warningly; for Mrs. Coote was coming
toward them, having just seen the last of the enquiring neighbors out of
the gate, dismissing them with a promise that she would see to the
welfare of the children and not permit them to be abused.
“You needn’t be afraid,” she said to Ethel. “I’ve no intention of adding
to Harry’s punishment, for I think he has already had quite enough. I
will help him upstairs, and the rest of you had best come along.”
Taking the child’s hand she led him a little way, but finding he was
hardly able to stand or move, she lifted him in her arms and carried him
up the stairs to the children’s room, the others following. Laying him
on his bed she went from the room, to return almost immediately with a
basin of warm water and some soothing ointment, with which she proceeded
to make the poor little fellow as comfortable as possible, undressing
him and laying him in his little bed again, handling him almost as
tenderly as though he had been her own, though she said very little,
leaving the children in some doubt whether she did or did not approve of
her husband’s barbarous treatment.
“I’m going down now,” she said when she had finished. “You needn’t have
any more lessons to-day, any of you. I think it would be as well for you
girls to stay here with Harry. You may play, sleep, or do whatever you
please so that you don’t get into mischief or make a racket that can be
heard down in the study.”
“Yes, ma’am, thank you,” returned Ethel, “we’ll be quiet as mice and as
good as we know how.”
Mrs. Coote had hardly gone when the little boy raised himself in the bed
and looking with tearful eyes at his sisters grouped together beside
him:
“I’ll be a man some o’ these days,” he sobbed, “and then if I don’t take
that old rascal down and beat him harder’n he beat me to-day—it—it’ll be
queer. Yes, I’ll just thrash him till he can’t move, so I will.”
“I couldn’t feel sorry for him, I couldn’t,” sobbed Ethel, “but, O
Harry, dear, we must try to forgive him; because the Bible says,
‘Forgive your enemies. Forgive and ye shall be forgiven.’ And we all
need to have forgiveness from God. So we will ask our Heavenly Father to
help us to forgive this cruel, cruel man, and to help us to get away
from him so that he can’t ever hurt us any more.”
“Yes,” said Harry, “after he’s had one good, sound thrashing from me. I
just ache to give it to him, and I will, just as soon as I’m big
enough.”
“Maybe God will punish him before that,” sobbed Blanche. “I’m sure I
hope so.”
“Me too,” said Nannette, wiping her tearful eyes. “I’ll ask God to
punish the naughty man every time I say my prayers.”
“Oh, no,” said Ethel persuasively; “instead of that let’s all ask Him to
take us away from here and put us in a good home where we’ll never see
these cruel people any more.”
While this talk was going on among the children Mrs. Coote had gone down
to the study, where she found her husband striding angrily to and fro.
He glanced at his wife as she came in and read scorn and contempt in the
look she gave him.
“So you, I see, are ready to uphold that young rascal in his wrongdoing;
and the meddlesome neighbors who come interfering here, as well,” he
said wrathfully.
“The neighbors were perfectly right,” she answered in an icy tone, “and
I’m not at all sure they haven’t saved you from murder and the hangman’s
rope. That’s what your awful temper will bring you to some of these
days, if you don’t learn to exercise some self-control.”
She paused for an instant, then went on in a tone of stern
determination: “And I warn you to beware how you lay a hand on one of
those orphan children again; for as sure as you do I’ll let the uncles
know all about this thing, and they’ll be promptly taken away out of
your reach, inhuman brute that you are.”
“Take care how you talk, woman,” he said menacingly, though his cheek
paled at her threat. “I’m the stronger of the two, and you may live to
regret it.”
“The stronger, but by far the more cowardly,” she returned with a
disagreeable laugh. “I’m not afraid o’ you, Patrick Coote; you’re too
well aware of my worth to you to try doing me any deadly harm.”
“Deadly harm?” he repeated, “who talks of deadly harm? ’Twas you that
said it, not I. But I’ll have you, as well as those unruly youngsters,
to know who’s master in this house.”
So saying he took up his hat and walked out through the front yard and
down the street, Mrs. Coote standing at the window and sending after him
a glance of mingled contempt and disdain.
“I haven’t wasted any fondling on those children,” she said to herself,
“but I’d sooner take a beating myself than give that bit of a boy such a
thrashing for next to nothing, and I’ll see that it isn’t done again.”
Mr. Coote stalked on down the street in by no means a happy frame of
mind, everybody he met seeming to him to regard him with contempt and
aversion; for the whole neighborhood was roused by the story of his
abuse of the little orphan boy unfortunately committed to his care—a
story quickly circulated by those who had heard Harry’s screams and
rushed to the house to discover the cause and aid the sufferer.
One of his own parishioners, meeting, accosted him:
“See here, sir, you’d best be careful how you abuse those little orphans
in your care, for we Americans don’t approve of any such doings and
you’ll get yourself into trouble, you may depend on it.”
With a muttered, “You will please attend to your own affairs and leave
me to attend to mine,” Coote pushed past the speaker and stalked on his
way.
Harry’s screams had been heard at Mr. Keith’s, and the grocer’s wife had
stopped at their gate on her way home to tell the story of the brutal
treatment the poor child had received. The two ladies shed tears over it
and longed to go to the rescue of the poor little ones, yet refrained
for the present, and took time to consider what would be the best plan
to adopt for their relief. They talked the matter over together, and
finally decided that the uncles must be informed of the true state of
affairs, when doubtless they would take steps to secure the children
from a repetition of such cruel treatment.
“Ethel writes a very neat hand,” remarked Mrs. Keith. “I wonder she has
not complained to them long before this.”
“Doubtless her letters, if she has written any, have all passed through
the hands of Mr. or Mrs. Coote and been suppressed if she ventured any
complaint of their treatment,” returned Mrs. Weston.
“Yes, I dare say that is so,” said Mrs. Keith. “Well, the very next time
Ethel comes over here I shall ask her if she would like to write to any
of her relatives and knows their address, offering her writing materials
and postage stamp and promising to mail the letter for her.”
“A very good plan if she knows the address, which I doubt,” returned
Mrs. Weston.
They did not know it, but Ethel in her room watching beside Harry, who
had sobbed himself to sleep, was considering the same question, namely,
how she could let her uncles know how badly she and her little brother
and sisters were being treated. She had been ignorant of the address
until the day before, when Mrs. Coote had bidden her carry out the
scrap-basket from the study and empty it into the coal scuttle in the
kitchen, and in doing so she had seen and secured an envelope bearing
the address of the firm of Eldon Brothers. It could do no harm to take
it, she thought, as otherwise it would only be burned up; and having an
ill-defined feeling that some day it might prove of service to her, she
had hastily put it in her pocket. It was there still, and now taking it
out she gazed at it with her tear-dimmed eyes, trying to think how she
could get writing materials and postage stamp, make use of them, and
post her letter, when written, without the knowledge of Mr. or Mrs.
Coote, who, if they knew, would be sure to prevent her from sending it.
“I will ask God to help me,” she said to herself, and at once dropping
on her knees sent up a silent but most fervid prayer that a way might be
opened for the accomplishment of her wish.