"It's alright, Maxine." She was so enthusiastic about her defense of the girl, it was hard to not smile. He was proud of her. But she had to understand. "I'm glad that you tried to stop him in other ways first. And it sounds to me like he deserved the duck head."
This was the hard part. "But do you understand why other people might not like it? Why they'd be mad about what you did? Did they at least try to explain to you why what you were doing was not good, even though it was technically the right thing to do?"