He stooped and scratched it with his thick thumbnail. It was
undoubtedly blood, and nothing else. Some one had been badly hurt
there, or being wounded had stood some moments on the spot to open the
door and get out.
The old man leaned on his broom awhile, considering the matter, and
debating whether he should call his wife. His natural impulse was not
to do so, but to get a bucket of water and wash the place before she
could see it. The idea of going out and calling a policeman never
occurred to him, for he was a real Roman, and his first instinct was
to remove every trace of blood from the house in which he lived,
whether it had been shed by accident or in quarrel. On the other hand,
his wife might come out at any moment, to go to her work, and find him
washing the pavement, and she would of course suppose that he had
killed somebody or had helped to kill somebody during the night, and
would begin to scream, and call him an assassin, and there would be a
great noise, and much trouble afterwards. According to his view, any
woman would naturally behave in this way, and as his views were
founded on his own experience, he was probably right, so far as his
wife was concerned. He therefore determined to call her.
She came, she saw, she threw up her hands and moaned a little about
the curse that was on the house, and she helped him to scrub the
stones as quickly as possible.
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