it all
inside you, without bringing of it out, in the presence of your elders.
You know what your father is--a man as never yet laid his tongue to a
thing without doing of it--right or wrong, right or wrong; and this time
he hath right, and the law, and the Lord, and the King himself, to the
side of him. And a rope's-end in his pocket, Dan, as I tried to steal
away, but he were too wide-awake. Such a big hard one you never did
see!"

"A rope's end for me, well turned twenty years of age!" cried Daniel,
with a laugh, but not a merry one; "two can play at that game, mother.
I'll not be ropes ended by nobody."

"Then you'll be rope-noosed;" the poor mother fell into the settle, away
from the fire-light, and put both hands over her eyes, to shut out the
spectacle of Dan dangling; "or else your father will be, for you. Ever
since the Romans, Dan, there have been Tugwells, and respected ten times
more than they was. Oh do 'e, do 'e think; and not bring us all to the
grave, and then the gallows! Why I can mind the time, no more agone than
last Sunday, when you used to lie here in the hollow of my arm, without
a stitch of clothes on, and kind people was tempted to smack you in
pleasure, because you did stick out so prettily. For a better-formed
baby there never was seen, nor a finer-tempered one, when he had his
way. And the many nights I walked the floor with you, Dan, when your
first tooth was coming through, the size of a horse-radish, and your
father most wonderful to put up with my coo to you, when he had not had
a night in bed for nigh three weeks--oh, Dan, do 'e think of things as
consarneth your homer life, and things as is above all reason; and let
they blessed politics go home to them as trades in them."

Mrs. Tugwell's tender recollections had given her a pain in the part
where Dan was nursed, and driven her out of true logical course; but she
came back to it, before Dan had time to finish the interesting pictures
of himself which she had suggested.

"Now can you deny a word of that, Dan? And if not, what is there more to
say? You was smacked as a little babe, by many people kindly, when ever
so much tenderer than you now can claim to be. And in those days you
never could have deserved it yet, not having framed a word beyond 'Mam,'
and 'Da,' and both of those made much of, because doubtful. There was
nothing about the Constitooshun then, but the colour of the tongue and
the condition of the bowels; and if any fo