.

"She spoke out of her turn just now," said Brother Copas sternly.
"Her behaviour to Nurse Turner was quite atrocious. . . . Now either
she has picked this up at school, or--the thought occurs to me--she
has been loafing around the laundry, gossiping with the like of Mrs.
Royle and Mrs. Clerihew, and letting their evil communications
corrupt her good manners. This seems to me the better guess, because
the women in the laundry are always at feud with the nurses; it's
endemic there: and 'a nasty two-faced spy' smacks, though faintly,
of the wash-tub. In my hearing Mrs. Clerihew has accused Nurse
Branscome of 'carrying tales.' 'A nasty two-faced spy'--the child
was using those very words when we surprised her, and the Lord knows
what worse before we happened on the scene."

"Nurse Turner would not tell, and so we have no right to speculate."

"That's true. . . . I'll confine myself to what we overheard.
Now when a chit of a child stands up and hurls abuse of that kind at
a woman well old enough to be her mother, two things have to be done.
. . . We must get at the root of this deterioration in Corona,
but first of all she must be punished. The question is, Which of us
will undertake it? You have the natural right, of course--"

Brother Bonaday winced.

"No, no--" he protested.

"I should have said, the natural obligation. But you are frail just
now, and I doubt if you are equal to it."

"Copas! . . . You're not proposing to _whip_ her?" Brother Copas
chuckled grimly. But that the child was in the next room, possibly
listening, he might have laughed aloud.

"Do they whip girls?" he asked. "I used to find the whipping of boys
disgusting enough. . . . I had an assistant master once, a treasure,
who remained with me six years, and then left for no reason but that
I could not continue to pay him. I liked him so much that one day,
after flogging a boy in hot blood, and while (as usual) feeling sick
with the revulsion of it, I then and there resolved that, however
much this trade might degrade me, this Mr. Simcox should be spared
the degradation whilst in my employ. I went to his class-room and
asked to have a look at his punishment-book. He answered that he
kept none. `But,' said I, 'when you first came to me didn't I give
you a book, and expressly command you, whenever you punished a boy,
to write an entry, giving the boy's name, the nature of his offence,
and the number of strokes with which you punish