t was wet or fine, cold or warm,
because they had no nurseries, and how they could get very little to
eat, and how the only toys they had were bits of wood and old bottles.
And then and there I made so bold as to suggest to my discontented
friend--who of course had every reason to be unhappy, when her mother,
who already had given her so many nice things, refused to buy her an
expensive doll--that if she were not only to stop wishing for any more
new toys, but were to send a few of those she already had to be given
away to some of these children who had none, why I fancied she would not
be altogether miserable any longer. That is what I told her to do, and
that is what she did, and I believe I may truthfully say it was a
wonderful cure.

'Then--let me see--yes,' the Ameliorator continued more briskly, 'then
there was a boy, or--shall I say, a little man?--who once consulted me.
The difficulty, if I remember rightly, was intellectual. O yes!--he was
convinced that he, being a wise patriarch of eight or nine, knew more
than the lady engaged by his parents to teach him. So he applied to her
a not very respectful nickname and refused to learn the lessons that she
set him, and swaggered about calling her a beast, which is not the right
attitude of a gentleman (although old enough to know everything) towards
a lady, and made himself as unpleasant as he could.

'By some chance, one of my cards fell into his hands: he read it and was
fascinated by the words, "Bad governesses punished." He came to me to
arrange for the punishment. The best way, I told him, is shocks. There
is nothing like a shock to bring a governess to her senses. "Now, what
is the last thing in the world your governess expects from you?" I
asked. "Why, that you will learn a lesson of your own accord, without
constant jogs from her." So that if he were to do this, I told him, he
would give her a severe shock, and thus punish her.

'He went away delighted with the plan. Morning after morning he appeared
in the schoolroom with his task all prepared, and every morning the
governess received a new shock. And when I peeped through the window not
long after, there they sat, close together, she happy after her
punishment, and he happy because (only he didn't know this) he had made
her so. For she was unhappy before--very; but young fellows with exalted
ideas on their own judgment and knowledge have no time to observe the
unhappiness of their governesses or parents,