m not to bite like a little cur!"

"Give him to me, Morris," she said, almost breathless. The child was
restraining himself manfully. There was a smear of blood on his mouth
from Loring's bitten hand. This smear turned Sophy's heart to water. She
gasped out: "Oh!... You've hurt him ... his mouth's bleeding!"

"That's not _his_ blood--little devil! It's _my_ blood.... Your son must
resemble his sainted father very closely," he added, with sudden
savagery. "Let me by. It's time he had a lesson--and I'm going to give
it to him, by God!"

But Sophy had her arms round Bobby. He was held fast by the four
determined arms. His little smeared mouth was pressed tight. He was as
white as Sophy now.

"Morris," she was saying in a low, quick voice, "I know how to deal with
him. Let him come to me...."

"No. It's time a man took him in hand. Don't make a scene here in the
hall."

"Give me my son...."

"Don't make a scene, I tell you. I'm not going to let a British brat
stick his teeth in me with impunity. Take your hands off. Let me go!"

"You shall never strike him--never!"

"All this is so good for the boy, ain't it?"

"Do you want me to despise you?"

"I don't care what you do, so long as I give this little beggar a
trouncing."

All this time the boy neither struggled nor uttered a sound. Suddenly
he spoke. The tone was as if Cecil spoke out of the grave. It startled
Sophy with reminiscence. It startled Loring by its sheer, concentrated
maturity of scorn and hatred.

"Mother," came the low voice, "let him beat me. Then maybe _you'll hate
him, too_...."

Loring stood a second, dumfounded, then he withdrew his arms sharply.

"Well I'm damned!" exclaimed the man, staring at the child who had
spoken with all the condensed feeling of a man. Then he laughed
suddenly--the bitter, sneering laugh that Sophy had come to dread. He
turned on his heel.

"Take your little Chesney brute," he said as he turned away. "I guess
he'll prove about as much a comfort as your big Chesney did!"

He sauntered out upon the sea-lawn, whistling.

But Bobby was both punished and brought to reason by his mother. It was
easy to punish him far more effectively and severely than by a whipping.
Bobby had sustained spankings from his earliest infancy with true
British stoicism. What his mother did was to make him give the lame
puppy to the gardener's little girl and provide her with five cents
weekly out of his allowance of ten cents, for the