mind, no doubt, but a cherry switch knows no such distinctions.

This incident only prepared Fred Brent for a further infraction of his
guardian's rules the next day. One of Miss Prime's strictest orders had
to do with fighting. Whatever the boys did to Fred, he was never to
resent it. He must come to her, and she would go to the boy's mother.
What an order to give a boy with muscles and fists and Nature strong
within him! But, save for the telling, it had been obeyed, although it
is hard to feel one's self an unwilling coward, a prig, and the
laughingstock of one's fellows. But when, on the day after his unjust
punishment, and while still stung by the sense of wrong, one of the
petty schoolboy tyrants began to taunt him, he turned upon the young
scamp and thrashed him soundly. His tormentor was not more hurt than
surprised. Like most of his class, he was a tattler. The matter got to
the teacher's ears, and that night Fred carried home an ominous-looking
note. In his heart he believed that it meant another application of
cherry switch, either instructive or vindictive, but he did not care. He
had done the natural thing, and Nature rewards us for obeying her laws
by making us happy or stoical. He had gone up in the estimation of his
schoolfellows, even the thrashed one, and he felt a reckless joy. He
would welcome a whipping. It would bring him back memories of what he
had given Billy Tompkins. "Would n't Miss Hester be surprised," he
thought, "if I should laugh out while she is whipping me?" And he
laughed at the very thought. He was full of pleasure at himself. He had
satisfied the impulse within him for once, and it made him happy.

Miss Prime read the ominous note, and looked at her charge thoughtfully.
Fred glanced expectantly in the direction of the top of the
clothes-press. But she only said, "Go out an' git in yore kindlin',
Freddie; git yore chores done, an' then come in to supper." Her voice
was menacingly quiet. The boy had learned to read the signs of her face
too well to think that he was to get off so easily as this. Evidently,
he would "get it" after supper, or Miss Prime had some new, refined mode
of punishment in store for him. But what was it? He cudgelled his brain
in vain, as he finished his chores, and at table he could hardly eat for
wondering. But he might have spared himself his pains, for he learned
all too soon.

Immediately after supper he was bidden to put on his cap and come along.
Miss Pri