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the threatened deluge from motives of precaution connected with the drawing-room ceiling. "Oh, Zack! Zack! what will you do next? What would your papa say if he heard of this? You wicked, wicked, wicked child, I'm ashamed to look at you!"
And, in very truth, Zack offered at that moment a sufficiently disheartening spectacle for a mother's eyes to dwell on. There stood the young imp, sturdy and upright in his chair, wriggling his shoulders in and out of his frock, and holding his hands behind him in unconscious imitation of the favorite action of Napoleon the Great. His light hair was all rumpled down over his forehead; his lips were swelled; his nose was red; and from his bright blue eyes Rebellion looked out frankly mischievous, amid a surrounding halo of dirt and tears, rubbed circular by his knuckles. After gazing on her son in mute despair for a minute or so, Mrs. Thorpe took the only course that was immediately open to her--or, in other words, took the child off the chair.
"Have you learnt your lesson, you wicked boy?" she asked.
"No, I havn't," answered Zack, resolutely.
"Then come to the table with me: your papa's waiting to hear you. Come here and learn your lesson directly," said Mrs. Thorpe, leading the way to the table.
"I won't!" rejoined Zack, emphasizing the refusal by laying tight hold of the wet sides of the bath with both hands.
It was lucky for this rebel of six years old that he addressed those two words to his mother only. If his nurse had heard them, she would instantly have employed that old-established resource in all educational difficulties, familiarly known to persons of her condition under the appellation of "a smack on the head;" if Mr. Thorpe had heard them, the boy would have been sternly torn away, bound to the back of a chair, and placed ignominiously with his chin against the table; if Mr. Goodworth had heard them, the probability is that he would instantly have lost his temper, and soused his grandson head over ears in the bath. Not one of these ideas occurred to Mrs. Thorpe, who possessed no ideas. But she had certain substitutes which were infinitely more useful in the present emergency: she had instincts.
"Look up at me, Zack," she said, returning to the bath, and sitting in the chair by its side; "I want to say something to you."
The boy obeyed directly. His mother opened her lips, stopped suddenly, said a few words, stopped again, hesitated--and then ended her first sentence of admonition in the most ridiculous manner, by snatching at the nearest towel, and bearing Zack off to the wash-hand basin.
The plain fact was, that Mrs. Thorpe was secretly vain of her child. She had long since, poor woman, forced down the strong strait- waistcoats of prudery and restraint over every other moral weakness but this--of all vanities the most beautiful; of all human failings surely the most pure! Yes, she was proud of Zack! The dear, naughty, handsome, church-disturbing, door-kicking, house-flooding Zack! If he had been a plain-featured boy, she could have gone on more sternly with her admonition: but to look coolly on his handsome face, made ugly by dirt, tears, and rumpled hair; to speak to him in that state, while soap, water, brush and towel, were all within reach, was more than the mother (or the woman either, for that matter) had the self-denial to do! So, before it had well begun, the maternal lecture ended impotently in the wash-hand basin.
When the boy had been smartened and brushed up, Mrs. Thorpe took him on her lap; and suppressing a strong desire to kiss him on both his round, shining cheeks, said these words:--
"I want you to learn your lesson, because you will please me by obeying your papa. I have always been kind to you,--now I want you to be kind to me."
For the first time, Zack hung down his head, and seemed unprepared with an answer. Mrs. Thorpe knew by experience what this symptom meant. "I think you are beginning to be sorry for what you have done, and are going to be a good boy," she said. "If you are, I know you will give me a kiss." Zack hesitated again--then suddenly reached up, and gave his mother a hearty and loud-sounding kiss on the tip of her chin. "And now you will learn your lesson?" continued Mrs. Thorpe. "I have always tried to make you happy, and I am sure you are ready, by this time, to try and make me happy--are you not, Zack?"
"Yes, I am," said Zack manfully. His mother took him at once to the table, on which the "Select Bible Texts for Children" lay open, and tried to lift him into a chair "No!" said the boy,