h
indignation. "Don't you think the boy's father knows what is best for
his own son? He won't hurt him any more than he ought to be hurt."

"I only hope he will hurt himself as much as he ought to be hurt,"
muttered Anna Carroll on the divan. Mrs. Carroll gave her
sister-in-law one look, then swept out of the room. The tail of her
rose-colored silk curled around the door-sill, and she was gone. She
passed through the hall, and out of the front-door to the lawn,
whence she strolled around the house, keeping on the side farthest
from the room occupied by her son.

"Hark!" whispered Ina, a moment after her mother had gone.

They all listened, and a swishing sound was distinctly audible. It
was the sound of regular, carefully measured blows.

"Amy went out so she should not hear," whispered Ina. "Oh, Dear!"

"It is harder for her than for anybody else because she has to uphold
Arthur for doing what she knows is wrong," said Anna Carroll on the
divan. She spoke as if to herself, pressing her hands to her ears.

"Papa is doing just right," cried Charlotte, indignantly. "How dare
you speak so about papa, Anna?"

"There is no use in speaking at all," said Anna, wearily. "There
never was. I am tired of this life and everything connected with it."

Ina was weeping again convulsively. She also had put her hands to her
ears, and her piteous little wet, quivering face was revealed.

"There is no need of either of you stopping up your ears," said
Charlotte. "You won't hear anything except the--blows. Eddy never
makes a whimper. You know that."

She spoke with a certain pride. She felt in her heart that a whimper
from her little brother would be more than she herself could bear,
and would also be more culpable than the offence for which he was
being chastised. She said that her brother never whimpered, and yet
she listened with a little fear that he might. But she need have had
no apprehension. Up in his bedroom, standing before his father in his
little thin linen blouse, for he had pulled off his jacket without
being told, directly when he had first entered the room, the little
boy endured the storm of blows, not only without a whimper, but
without a quiver.

Eddy stood quite erect. His pretty face was white, his little hands
hanging at his sides were clinched tightly, but he made not one sound
or motion which betrayed pain or fear. He was counting the blows as
they fell. He knew how many to expect. There were so many fo