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supplied his father's bath with water; and instantly resolved
to flood the house. He had set the water going in the bath, had filled it
to the brim, and was anxiously waiting, perched up on a chair, to see it
overflow--when his mother unlocked the dressing-room door, and
entered the room.

"Oh, you naughty, wicked, shocking child!" cried Mrs. Thorpe,
horrified at what she beheld, but instantly stopping 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