"I never touched her! Indeed I didn't, uncle!" "You knocked over the cradle," said my uncle, "and that's much the same thing." I was silent.

My uncle proceeded.
"And I suppose you are not aware that the barber who tried to take you down the stairs is now in the hospital with an abscess on his leg, the result of the kick you gave him ?" "Oh, I can't have done it, uncle--oh, uncle!" And here I was so overwhelmed with the vision of my enormities and their possible consequences that I became hysterical, and Mrs Hudson was summoned to the rescue.
The fact was, in the account of the fray I appear to have got credit for all the terrible deeds that were there done; and I, Master Freddy Batchelor, was, it appeared, notorious in the village as having been guilty of a savage and felonious assault upon one C.

Prog, of having also assaulted and almost "manslaughtered" Miss Prog the younger, and further of having dealt with my feet against the shin of one Moppleton, a barber, in such manner as to render him incapable of pursuing his ordinary avocations, and being chargeable on the parish infirmary; besides sundry and divers damage to carpets, crockery, glass, doorposts, kerb-stones, and the jacket of the aforesaid C.Prog.

On the whole, when I arose from my bed and stepped once more into the outer world, I found myself a very atrocious character indeed.
At home I was in disgrace, and abroad I was not allowed to wander beyond my uncle's garden, except to church on Sunday under a heavy escort.

So on the whole I had not a very good time of it.