slipper which had seen better days.
Even then, prudence cried out for yet another delay, for the young
Indian was carrying so much of his commissariat upon his person that it
seemed wise to wash him, before she proceeded to the spanking. Mrs.
Brenton's point of view, moreover, was decidedly old-fashioned. Instead
of rejoicing at this fresh manifestation of her boy's imagination, she
concentrated all her remarks upon what she termed his theft, and she
frugally used the period while she was scrubbing him, to drive her
spoken condemnations home. Accordingly, it was a long, long time of
duplex agony before the spanking finally achieved itself, and Scott,
clean, but tingling from the slipper's impact, was told to go out and
sit down on the doorstep and think over what a bad, bad boy he had
been.

Like Alexander the Less, he found the doorstep distinctly cooling to
his fevered person, and he sat there contentedly enough, while he gave
himself over to the luxury of bubbly sobs and of digging his fists into
his weeping eyes. So absorbed was he in this soothing occupation that
he paid no heed to the patter of approaching footsteps, until a voice
fell on his ears.

"Cry-baby!" the voice chirped, in the high key which, to the youthful
mind, is expressive of disdain. And then it added even more
disdainfully, "Dirty-face!"

Dazed by this two-fold attack upon him, Scott took down his smudgy
fists and displayed to the intruder's view his smudgy countenance. An
older pair of eyes might easily have discovered cause for wonder that,
in so short a time since his scrubbing, so great a quantity of mother
earth could have found its way upward to mingle with his tears and form
the dust that grimed his face. Despite his tears and his grime,
however, Scott's manly temper roused itself to face his critic.

"I ain't!" he bellowed hotly at the air around him, without troubling
himself to look to see whence the strange voice had come.

The voice reflected somewhat of his opposition.

"You are, too. What's on your face?"

"Blackberry jam and soap," Scott answered, with a craftiness beyond his
years. He told the literal truth, but not all the truth. No need to
inform this critical stranger what was the crust that lay on top of
all.

The critical stranger removed her pink countenance from the crack
between the front-fence pickets, and pushed the gate open just a very
little way. Seen through the larger crack, she stood revealed to Scott,
a