everywhere, and
remember everything--pony losing her shoe, and nigh tumbling down with
me, and Ross at the post so cross for nothing!'

'You'll grieve at the way you have used your poor brother one of these
days, Harold,' quietly answered his mother, so low, that Alfred could not
hear through the floor. 'Now, you'll please to go to bed.'

'Ain't I to have no supper?' said Harold in a sullen voice, with a great
mind to sit down in the chimney-corner in defiance.

'I shall give you something hot when you are in bed. If I treated you as
you deserve, I should send you to Mr. Blunt's this moment; but I can't
afford to have you ill too, so go to bed this moment.'

His mother could still master him by her steadiness and he went up,
muttering that he'd no notion of being treated like a baby, and that he
would soon shew her the difference: he wasn't going to be made a slave to
Alfred, and 'twas all a fuss about that stuff!

He did fancy he said his prayers; but they could not have been real ones,
for he was no softer when his mother came to his bedside with a great
basin of hot gruel. He said he hated such nasty sick stuff, and grunted
savagely when, with a look that ought to have gone to his heart, she
asked if he thought he deserved anything better.

Yet she did not know of the shooting gallery, nor of his false excuses.
If he had not been deceiving her, perhaps he might have been touched.

'Well, Harold,' she said at last, after taking the empty basin from him,
and picking up his wet clothes and boots to dry them by the fire, 'I hope
as you lie there you'll come to a better mind. It makes me afraid for
you, my boy. It is not only your brother you are sinning against, but if
you are a bad boy, you know Who will be angry with you. Good-night.'

She lingered, but Harold was still hard, and would neither own himself
sorry, nor say good-night.

When she passed his bed at the top of the stairs again, after hanging up
the things by the fire, he had his head hidden, and either was, or
feigned to be, asleep.

Alfred's ill-temper was nearly gone, but he still thought himself
grievously injured, and was at no pains to keep himself from groaning and
moaning all the time he was being put to bed. In fact, he rather liked
to make the most of it, to shew his mother how provoking she was, and to
reproach Harold for his neglect.

The latter purpose he did not effect; Harold heard every sound, and
consoled himself by thinkin