“I won’t beg his pardon,” I said, speaking for the first time.
My mother paused, incredulous.
I folded my arms on her table-cloth, and delivered my wicked little ultimatum. “I won’t beg his pardon nohow,” I said. “See?”
“Then you will have to go off to your uncle Frapp at Chatham.”
“I don’t care where I have to go or what I have to do, I won’t beg his pardon,” I said.
And I didn’t.
After that I was one against the world. Perhaps in my mother’s heart there lurked some pity for me, but she did not show it. She took the side of the young gentleman; she tried hard, she tried very hard, to make me say I was sorry I had struck him. Sorry!
I couldn’t explain.
So I went into exile in the dog-cart to Redwood station, with Jukes the coachman, coldly silent, driving me, and all my personal be
