ard's room and
walked in blindly, saying: "I must whip you--you've broken the law, and
if you do that you must be punished." Out of the darkness before her
came the voice of the tiny desperado: "Very well. It was quite worf
this. Mother, I'm ready. Come on and whip me." She pulled down the
blinds and set herself to the horrid task, and kept at it hardly,
unsparingly, until she felt she had really hurt him. Then she said, with
what seemed to be the last breath in her heart-shattered body: "There,
you see, whenever you break the law people will hurt you like this. So
take notice." She moved about the room, leaving it as it should be left
for the night, opening the windows and folding up the counterpane, while
he lay face downwards on his pillow. Just as she was closing the door he
called softly:

"Mummie!"

She continued to close it, and he cried:

"Mummie!"

But she remained quite quiet so that he thought she had gone. After a
minute she heard him throw himself over in the bed and kick the clothes
and sob fiercely, "Gah! Why can't she come when I call her?"

She was back by his bedside in a second, and his arms were round her
neck and he was sobbing:

"Mummie, mummie, I know I've been naughty!" And as he felt the wetness
of her face he cried out, "Oh, mummie, have I made you cry? I will be
good! I will be good! I'll never make you cry again! I know I was a
beast to go 'cos you really were frightened of us getting measles, but
oh, mummie, I did so want to see a tiger!"

They clung to each other, weeping, and he said things into her neck that
were far more babyish than usual and yet fiercely manly, and they almost
melted into each other in the hot flow of loving tears.

"You were quite right to whip me," he told her. "I wouldn't have
believed you were really cross if you hadn't hurt me." Presently, when
he was lying quietly in her arms, all sticky sweetness like toffee, he
sighed, "Oh, darling, the circus was lovely! There were such clever
people. There was a Cossack horseman who picked up handkerchiefs off the
ground when he was riding at full speed, and there was a most beautiful
lady in pink satin. Mummie, you'd look lovely in pink satin!--and she'd
bells on her legs and arms, and she waggled them and it made a tune.
That was lovely, but I liked the animals best. Oh, darling, the lions!"

She rebuked him for his continued enjoyment of an illicit spectacle that
ought now to be regarded only as material for rep