"My butt... Oww... It hurts..."

Felix pressed on her tailbone, and Tang Xiaonan shrieked like a pig being slaughtered. She lay pitifully on his shoulder, and it broke Felix’s heart to see her. He yelled at Mrs. Golding, "If you’re angry, take it out on me! What are you doing hitting a child?"

"You damned old hag! I’ll kill you!"

Phoebe Huxley’s eyes were bloodshot. She flung Phoenix Golding aside, ready to teach Mrs. Golding a lesson.

"Stop!"

Raina arrived just in time, shouting for Phoebe Huxley to stop. If that punch had actually landed, the Thorne family would have gone from being in the right to being in the wrong.

"Grandma..."

Tang Xiaonan cried out, her eyes welling with tears. Raina checked her wrist, her own gaze sharpening. Then she lifted the girl’s shirt. Seeing the large, blood-streaked bruise on her lower back, Raina’s eyes turned as cold as ice.

Raina shoved Phoebe Huxley aside and looked down imperiously at Mrs. Golding. Raina was about as tall as Phoebe, making them both unusually tall women for the village—taller, even, than some of the men.

"A woman your age, picking a fight with a six-year-old girl? What have you been eating for the past few decades, grass?"

"You take a good look! See what your family did to my Phoenix and Linden! The Thornes are nothing but bullies!" Mrs. Golding’s hands were trembling with rage.

"That vixen daughter of yours hit my little girl first! Then she seduced my Felix and mooched dozens of pounds of meat off our family! She got off easy, I’d say!" Phoebe Huxley roared, even louder than before.

The color drained from Raina’s face. ’Dozens of pounds of meat... Does my eldest son have shit for brains?’

"Fooling around with a man in broad daylight! Pah! After raising such a shameless daughter, you still have the nerve to show up here and start a fight? If I were you, I’d find a belt, hang myself with it, and go apologize to the Golding ancestors in the afterlife!"

Phoebe Huxley wasn’t just physically strong; her tongue was just as sharp. She berated Mrs. Golding until the older woman was red in the face and gasping for breath. At this rate, she wouldn’t need a belt; if Phoebe kept it up, a blood vessel was liable to burst and send her straight to the King of Hell.

"That’s bullshit! My Phoenix is innocent! Stop slinging mud!"

"Innocent? Then where did those red marks come from? Did some stray dog gnaw on her?"

"I did it!"

Vernon Spann suddenly appeared, shouting his reply. He shot Phoenix Golding a long look, forcing down his disgust, and announced in a loud voice, "What Phoenix and I do in the bedroom is our business. We don’t have to explain it to everyone, do we? I’m the one who made those marks. Aurelia, you can’t go around slinging mud!"

Phoenix Golding let out a long sigh of relief. ’Vernon knows what’s good for him,’ she thought. ’I’ll have to be a little nicer to him after this.’

"...I only have my students’ best interests at heart, but you all just keep slandering me and even beat me up like this! I... what’s the point of me even being a teacher anymore?"

With Vernon Spann stepping forward to defend her, Phoenix Golding was instantly emboldened.

The other villagers began to waver, thinking they might have wronged Phoenix Golding after all. What man, they reasoned, would willingly declare himself a cuckold? Vernon Spann had spoken with such conviction; it must be true.

They also felt Phoenix Golding wasn’t that sort of person; she always seemed so proper. How could she be fooling around with another man? True, she had been involved with Felix Thorne before, but that was ancient history. Phoebe Huxley’s lingering jealousy seemed completely unreasonable.

The tide of opinion turned in an instant. Mrs. Golding straightened her back, clapping her hands as she jeered, "So what if my Phoenix sleeps with her own man? Do you Thornes think you can manage every little thing, right down to what happens in my daughter’s bedroom? And so what if she disciplines a student? She’s a teacher! Is a teacher not supposed to correct her students, or are the Thornes just too precious? If you can’t take it, then keep her out of school. No one will discipline her if she stays at home!"