f the family's good name and popularity. It would never do.
Philip ought to have some sense of what was due to his host; since he
had not, he must be put in mind of it. She would undertake the task
herself.

This she did, but without effect. Philip had promised sorrow and
amendment with a long face, but inwardly he laughed, and after, became
seven times worse than before.

Complaints multiplied. Not only were geese and cows interfered with, but
dogs and horses were found tied to saplings or shut up in most
unimaginable places. Burdocks and thistles appeared in meeting-house
pews, where they surely had never before been known spontaneously to
spring; teachers in the Sunday school were shocked to learn that they
had distributed dime novels with books and tracts. The minister, one
morning in the pulpit, solemnly opened his Bible, and unexpectedly
beholding a most ludicrous picture, laughed outright, to the great
scandal of every looker-on.

Now this was too much. Mrs. Selby had passed by stories of green-apple
showers falling upon homeward-bound school children's heads; she had
even smilingly held her peace when laughingly assured that a troop of
dogs and cats had gone madly wailing and howling through the streets, a
miniature world flaming with fire attached by means of wires to each
caudal appendage--even that was too much decidedly. But this tampering
with the meeting-house! Mrs. Selby consulted first her husband, as in
duty bound; that is, she called him aside, told him the latest pranks of
their protege, and emphatically added that there should be an end of
them.

"But wife, I cannot turn the boy out of my house."

"You need not, my dear; that is my privilege, particularly since he is
_my_ relative, not yours. Forbearance now would cease to be a virtue;
there is a limit to human endurance; there shall at once be an end to
this boy's mad pranks. He is on the piazza, perhaps studying some new
mischief; send him in to me, please."

"But are you not too hasty, wife?" urged the soft-hearted ex-Governor,
who remembered his own follies and frolics of long ago.

"Too hasty, when we have all borne so much? Gov. Selby"--with a
smile--"allow your wife to command you; send that naughty boy hither."

An hour later, Philip having sought her in house and garden, stood in
presence of Mary Selby, at last discovered in her attic studio.

"Your mother has banished me; she has already spoken the fatal words; I
must leave Newbe