The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle Her eyes gleamed with all the rage of indignation, which choked up her utterance, and seemed to convulse her whole frame: she twisted her left hand in his hair, and with the other buffeted him about the face till the blood gushed from his nostrils and mouth; while he defended his sister from the cruelty of Gam, who assaulted her from another quarter, seeing his brother engaged. This attack lasted several minutes with great violence, till at length Peregrine, finding himself in danger of being overpowered if he should remain any longer on the defensive, laid his brother on his back; then he disentangled his mother's hand from his own hair, and, having pushed her gently out of the room, bolted the door on the inside; finally, turning to Gam, he threw him out at the window, among a parcel of hogs that fed under it. By this time Julia was almost quite distracted with terror: she knew she had offended beyond all hope of forgiveness, and from that moment considered herself as an exile from her father's house: in vain did her brother strive to console her with fresh protestations of love and protection; she counted herself extremely miserable in being obliged to endure the eternal resentment of a parent with whom she had hitherto lived; and dreaded the censure of the world, which, from her mother's misrepresentation, she was sensible would condemn her unheard. That she might not, however, neglect any means in her power of averting this storm, she resolved to appease, if possible, her mother's wrath with humiliation, and even appeal to the influence of her father, weak as it was, before she would despair of being forgiven. But the good lady spared her this unnecessary application, by telling her, through the keyhole, that she must never expect to come within her father's door again; for, from that hour, she renounced her as unworthy of her affection and regard. Julia, weeping bitterly, endeavoured to soften the rigour of this sentence by the most submissive and reasonable remonstrances; but as, in her vindication, she of necessity espoused her elder brother's cause, her endeavours, instead of soothing, served only to exasperate her mother to a higher pitch of indignation, which discharged itself in invectives against Peregrine, whom she reviled with the epithets of a worthless, abandoned reprobate.