From forehead to chin, one side of his face was scratched as if a young tiger cat had set his claws in it. A knot was swelling rapidly on his upper lip, and one hand was covered with blood. Mrs. Branfield gave a gasp as she came running in answer to Libby's calls. "Why, you poor child!" she cried, gathering him up to her and sitting down in the big rocker with him in her lap. "What happened? What's the matter?"
He was sobbing so convulsively now, with long choking gasps, that he couldn't answer. She saw that his face was only scratched, but snatched up his hand to examine the extent of its injuries. As he looked at it too, the power of speech came back to him, in a degree.
"That isn't m-my b-blood!" he sobbed. "It's _B-Benjy's_ blood!"
"Oh, Will'm!" mourned Libby. "On Christmas eve, just when you've been trying so hard to be good, too!"
She picked up the stockings which she had dropped on running out of the house, and laid his over the back of a chair, as if she realized the hopelessness of hanging it up now, after he had acted so. At that, almost a spasm of sobs shook him. He didn't need anybody to remind him of all he had forfeited and all he had failed in. That was what he was crying about. He didn't mind the smarting of his face or the throbbing of his swollen lip. He was crying to think that the struggle of the last week was all for naught. He was all crooked with _Her_ again. _She_ didn't want him to fight and she'd never understand that this time he just _had_ to.
The arms that held him were pressing for an answer. "Tell me how it happened, dear."
"Benjy said for me to come on--and go to the grocery with him! And I said--that my--my mother--didn't want me to!"
"Yes," encouragingly, as he choked and stopped. He had never called her that before.
"And Benjy said like he always does, that you w-wasn't my m-m-mother anyhow. And I said you _was_! If he didn't take it back I--_I'd beat him up_!"
Libby was crying too, now, from sympathy. He'd been told so many times he must not fight that she was afraid he would have to be punished for such a bad fight as this. To be punished on Christmas eve was just _too_ awful! She stole an anxious glance towards the chimney, then toward her mother.