ar.

'Oh, poor little dear! Here--auntie's goody goody--'

'No, no, please, Emma, he has had quite as many as he ought! No, no,
Mite--' and he was borne off sobbing in her arms, while Ida observed,
'There! is that the way people treat their own children?'

'Some people never get rid of the governess,' observed Mrs. Morton, quite
unconscious that but for her interference there would have been no
contest and no tears.

But she herself had no doubts, and was mollified by Mary's plea on her
return. 'He is quite good now, but you see, there is so much danger of
our spoiling him, we feel that we cannot begin too soon to make him
obedient.'

'I could not bear to keep a poor child under in that way.'

'I believe it saves them a great deal if obedience is an instinct,' said
Mary.

It had not been Mrs. Morton's method, and she was perfectly satisfied
with the result, so she only made some inarticulate sound; but she
thought Frank quite as unnatural, when he kept Michael on his knee at
breakfast, but with only an empty spoon to play with! All the tossing
and playing, the radiant smiles between the two did not in her eyes atone
for these small beginnings of discipline, even though her
brother-in-law's first proceeding, whenever he came home, was to look for
his son, and if the child were not in the drawing-room, to hurry up to
the nursery and bring him down, laughing and shouting.

The Tyrolean nurse had been sacrificed to those notions of training which
the Westhaven party regarded as so harsh. Her home sickness and pining
for her mountains had indeed fully justified the 'rampant consciences,'
as to the humanity as well as the expedience of sending her home before
her indulgence of the Kleiner Freiherr had had time to counteract his
parents' ideas, and her place had been supplied by the nurse whom Amice
was outgrowing, so that Ida was disappointed of her intentions of
examining her, and laid up the circumstances as suspicious, though, on
the other hand, her mother was gratified at exercising a bit of patronage
by recommending a nursery girl from Westhaven. The next winter, however,
was not marked by a visit to Northmoor. Ida had been having her full
share of the summer and early autumnal gaieties of Westhaven, and among
the yachts who were given to putting in there was a certain _Morna_,
belonging to Sir Thomas Brady, who had become a baronet by force of
success in speculation. His son, who chiefly used it, showed