again, and said, "Did the other
fellows finish him up?"

"Oh, dear me, yes," said the terrified nurse; "all up, every bit--there
now--and asked for more!"

This consoled me. Presently a doctor came and looked at my forehead,
and left some powders, which I heard him say I was to take in jam three
times a day. I felt still more consoled.

In fact, reader, as you will have judged, I was a little damaged by the
adventure in Side Street, and the noble exploit of my companions and
myself had not ended all in glory.

A day or two after, when I got better, I found out more about it, and
rather painfully too, because my uncle landed one day in my bedroom and
commenced strongly to arraign me before him.

He bade me tell him what had happened, which I did as well as I could.
At the end of it he said, "I suppose you are not aware that for a day or
two it was uncertain whether you had not killed that child that was in
the room?"

"I?" I exclaimed. "I never touched her! Indeed I didn't, uncle!"

"You knocked over the cradle," said my uncle, "and that's much the same
thing."

I was silent. My uncle proceeded.

"And I suppose you are not aware that the barber who tried to take you
down the stairs is now in the hospital with an abscess on his leg, the
result of the kick you gave him?"

"Oh, I can't have done it, uncle--oh, uncle!"

And here I was so overwhelmed with the vision of my enormities and their
possible consequences that I became hysterical, and Mrs Hudson was
summoned to the rescue.

The fact was, in the account of the fray I appear to have got credit for
all the terrible deeds that were there done; and I, Master Freddy
Batchelor, was, it appeared, notorious in the village as having been
guilty of a savage and felonious assault upon one C. Prog, of having
also assaulted and almost "manslaughtered" Miss Prog the younger, and
further of having dealt with my feet against the shin of one Moppleton,
a barber, in such manner as to render him incapable of pursuing his
ordinary avocations, and being chargeable on the parish infirmary;
besides sundry and divers damage to carpets, crockery, glass, doorposts,
kerb-stones, and the jacket of the aforesaid C. Prog. On the whole,
when I arose from my bed and stepped once more into the outer world, I
found myself a very atrocious character indeed.

At home I was in disgrace, and abroad I was not allowed to wander beyond
my uncle's garden, except to church on Sunday