"I'd bite her!" murmured Doris between her clenched teeth. "I'd--I'd--scratch her!" She burst into excited tears. "I'd just--hate my mother if she--if she hurt me like that!"
"Pooh! Rob don't care so very much," Carroll assured her; "he says he hollers jus' as loud as he can so his mother'll stop quicker. I s'pose," he continued after a thoughtful pause, "Robbie'll be up to dinner jus' the same, an' we'll be here eatin' bread and milk."
Elizabeth's promised explanation to the father of the culprits above stairs led to a spirited discussion between the husband and wife, after Miss Tripp had retired to her apartment.
"Poor little kids," Sam Brewster said whimsically. "I believe I'm glad I'm not your child, Betty,--I mean, of course, that I'm glad I'm your husband," he amended quickly, as her unsmiling eyes reproached him. "Don't you think you were a little hard on them, though?"
"Hard on them?" she echoed indignantly. "You're much more severe with the children than I am, Sam,--when you're at home. You know you are."
He smoked thoughtfully for a minute or two before replying. "Look here, Betty," he said at last, "you're right in a way. I'm not half so patient as you are, I'll admit. But I wonder if we don't all miss the mark when it comes to disciplining children?--Wait--just a minute before you answer. I've been thinking a whole lot about this business of home rule since we--er--discussed it the other day, and I've come to the conclusion that the only thing to do is to let universal law take its course with them. They are human beings, my dear, and they've got to come up against the law in its broader sense sooner or later. Let 'em begin right now."
She was eyeing him pityingly. "And by that you mean----?"
"I mean," he went on, warming to his subject, "that you've got to teach a child what it means to reap what he sows. If Richard wants to put his finger on the stove and investigate the phenomenon of calorics, let him. He won't do it twice."
"And if he wants to paddle in the aquarium of a cold winter day, you'd----"
"Let him--of course," said Sam stoutly. "He'd feel uncomfortably damp and chilly after a while."
"Yes; and have the croup or pneumonia that same night."
"You're hopelessly old-fashioned, Betty," he laughed; "you shouldn't introduce the croup or pneumonia idea into the infant consciousness. But seriously, my dear, I believe I'm right. If you don't teach the children to recognise the relation between cause and effect now--so that it becomes second nature to them, how are they going to understand the subject when they're put up against it later? You'll find the mother bird and the mother bear, and, in fact, all the animal creation carefully instilling the idea of cause and effect into their offspring from the very beginning; while human parents are as constantly protecting their children from the effects of the causes which the children ignorantly set in motion. In other words we persist in undoing the work of old 'Mother Be-done-by-as-you-did.' It's a blunder, in my opinion. But of course, I'm a mere man and my ideas are not entitled to much consideration."