Home Scenes, and Home Influence | Page 9

thoughts entered a new element. This person was a brother of Mrs. Elder, and had recently become domesticated in her family. He was a bachelor.
After the (sic) visiter had retired, Mrs. Elder sat down to her work-table in the same room where she had received her company, and resumed her sewing operations, which the call had suspended. She had not been thus engaged long, before Mary came back into the room, looking sad enough. Instead of going to her mother; she went up to the old gentleman, and looking into his face with her yet tearful eyes, said--
"Uncle William?"
"What, dear?" was returned in a kind voice.
"Something sticks my neck. Won't you see what it is?"
Uncle William laid down his book, and, turning down the neck of Mary's frock, found that the point of a pin was fretting her body. There was at least a dozen little scratches, and an inflamed spot the size of a dollar.
"Poor child!" he said, tenderly, as he removed the pin. "There now! It feels better, doesn't it?"
"Yes, it feels better; thank you, dear uncle!" and Mary put up her sweet lips and kissed him. The old gentleman was doubly repaid for his trouble. Mary ran lightly away, and he resumed his book.
In about ten minutes, the child opened the door and came in pulling the dredging-box, to which she had tied a string, along the floor, and marking the progress she made by a track of white meal.
"You little torment!" exclaimed the mother, springing up, and jerking the string and box angrily from Mary's hand. "It is too bad! you know well enough that you had no business to touch this. Just see what a condition the floor is in! Oh dear! Shall I never teach the child any thing?"
Mrs. Elder took the dredging-box out into the kitchen, and gave the cook a sound scolding for permitting the child to have it. When she got back, Mary had her work-basket on the floor, rummaging through it for buttons and spools of cotton.
"Now just see that!" she exclaimed again. "There now!" And little Mary's ears buzzed for half an hour afterwards from the sound box she received.
After the child was thrust from the room, Mrs. Elder said, fretfully, "I'm out of all heart! I never saw such children. They seem ever bent on doing something wrong. Hark! what's that?"
There was the crash of something falling over head, followed by a loud scream.
Uncle William and Mrs. Elder both started from the room and ran up-stairs. Here they found Henry, a boy two years older than Mary, who was between three and four, lying on the carpet with a bureau drawer upon him, which he had, while turning topsy-turvy after something or other, accidentally pulled out upon him. He was more frightened than hurt, by a great deal.
"Now just look at that!" ejaculated the outraged mother when the cause of alarm became apparent. "Just look at that, will you? Isn't it beyond all endurance! Haven't I told you a hundred times not to go near my drawers, ha? No matter if you'd been half killed! There, march out of the room as quick as you can go." And she seized Henry by the arm with a strong grip, and fairly threw him, in her anger, from the chamber.
While she was yet storming, fretting, and fuming over the drawer, Uncle William retired from the apartment and, went down-stairs again. On entering the room he had left but a few minutes before, he found Mary at her mother's work-basket again, notwithstanding the box she had received only a short time before for the same fault.
"Mary," said Uncle William to the child, in a calm, earnest, yet kind voice.
The child took its hands from the basket and came up to her uncle.
"Mary, didn't your mother tell you not to go to her basket?"
"Yes, sir," replied Mary, looking steadily into her uncle's face.
"Then why did you go?"
"I don't know."
"It was very wrong." Uncle William spoke seriously, and the child's face assumed a serious expression.
"Will you do it any more?"
"No, sir." Mary shrink close to her uncle, and her reply was in a whisper.
"Be sure and not forget, Mary. Mother sews with her spools of cotton, and uses her scissors to make little Mary frocks and aprons, and if Mary takes any thing out of her work-basket, she can't do her sewing good. Will you remember?"
"Yes, sir."
"Now don't forget."
"No, sir."
"And just see, Mary, how you have soiled the carpet with the dredging-box! Didn't you know the flour would come out and be scattered all over the floor?"
"No, sir."
"But now you know it."
"Yes, sir."
"You won't get the dredging-box any more?"
"No, sir."
While this conversation was going on, Mrs. Elder came down, still feeling much excited. After Uncle William had said what he considered enough to