; and then as soon as she caught
sight of his anything but pleasant-looking countenance, she shrieked
again wildly, and flung herself upon her knees beside him. "What is it?
What is it, my darling?" she sobbed, as she caught him to her heart.

"That horrid boy! Knocking me about," he cried, stopping his howling so
as to deliver the words emphatically; and then looking at his stained
hands, and bursting into a howl of far greater power than before.

"The wretch! The wretch!" cried Lady Danby. "I always knew it. He has
killed my darling."

At this dire announcement Edgar shook himself free from his mother's
embrace, looked at his hands again, and then in the extremity of horror,
threw himself flat upon his back, and shrieked and kicked.

"O my darling, my darling!" cried Lady Danby.

"He isn't hurt much," cried Dexter indignantly.

"How dare you, sir!" roared Sir James.

"He's killed; he's killed!" cried Lady Danby, clasping her hands, and
rocking herself to and fro as she gazed at the shrieking boy, who only
wanted a cold sponge and a towel to set him right.

"Ow!" yelled Edgar, as he appreciated the sympathy of his mother, but
believed the very worst of his unfortunate condition. The lady now bent
over him, said that he was killed, and of course she must have known.

Edgar had never read _Uncle Remus_. All this was before the period when
that book appeared; but his conduct might very well be taken as a type
of that of the celebrated Brer Fox when Brer Rabbit was in doubt as to
whether he was really dead or only practising a ruse, and proceeded to
test his truth by saying, as he saw him stretched out--

"Brer Fox look like he dead, but he don't do like he dead. Dead fokes
hists up de behime leg, en hollers _wahoo_!"

Edgar, according to Brer Rabbit's ideas, was very dead indeed, for he
kept on "histing up de behime leg, en hollering _wahoo_!" with the full
power of his lungs.

By this time the alarm had spread, and there was the sound of steps upon
a gravel walk, which resulted in the appearance of the supercilious
footman.

"Carry Master Edgar up to the house," said Sir James, in his severest
magisterial tones.

"Carefully--very carefully," wailed her ladyship piteously; and she
looked and spoke as if she feared that as soon as the boy was touched he
would tumble all to pieces.

Dexter looked on, with his eyes turning here and there, like those of
some captured wild animal which fears danger; a