Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/115

This page needs to be proofread.
ARE ALL MEN ALIKE
105

doing when he got that thump on the nose?" demanded Teddie, with slowly rising indignation.

"He was doing nothing, apparently, which demanded his—his being maimed for life," the man of the law responded with dignity.

"He wasn't maimed for life," declared Teddie, with the last of her desolation gone, "but he got exactly what he deserved."

"That, of course, is a matter not for us but for the courts to decide," remarked William Shotwell, with a lugubrious shake of the head.

"Then what's the use of us talking about it now?" demanded Teddie, with a glance at her unfinished sketch of the Macauley Mission by Moonlight.

"It was merely to save you pain," remarked her benefactor as he rose from his chair.

"It seems rather an expensive anesthetic," observed Teddie, "at twenty-five thousand dollars a whiff!"

"Am I to understand, then, that you in-