Adna was wan with wrath. Kedzie
was afraid of her father's look. She had a kind of lockjaw of grief
such as children suffer and suffer for.
All she would answer to her father's threats was: "I won't! I won't!
I tell you I won't!"
Her cheeks were blubbered, her nose red, her mouth swollen, her hair
wet and stringy. She gulped and swallowed and beat her hands together
and stamped her feet.
Adna glared at her in hatred equal to her own for him. He said to
his wife: "Ma, we got to go back to first principles with that girl.
You got to give her a good beatin'."
Mrs. Thropp had the will but not the power. She was palsied with
rage. "I can't," she faltered.
"Then I will!" said Adna, and he roared with ferocity, "Come here
to me, you!"
He put out his hand like a claw, and Kedzie retreated from him. She
stopped sobbing. She had never been so frightened. She felt a new
kind of fright, the fright of a nun at seeing an altar threatened
with desecration. She had not been whipped for years. She had grown
past that. Surely her body was sacred from such infamy now.
"Come here to me, I tell you!" Adna snarled, as he pursued her
slowly around the chairs.
"You better not whip me, poppa," Kedzie mumbled. "You better not
touch me, I tell you. You'll be sorry if you do! You better not!"
"Come here to me!" said Adna.
"Momma, momma, don't let him!" Kedzie whispered as she ran to her
mother and flung herself in her arms for refuge.
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