]
To the query, "Well, do you have to do everything they ask you to,
Harold?" the lad's answer was a renewal of the heart-breaking sobs.
These softened the mother's heart, as many and many a woman's heart
has been melted through all the ages. She soothed the truant child and
petted him, until the cramping in his throat relaxed sufficiently to
admit of the passage of an astonishingly large slice of bread and
butter and sugar. After it was disposed of, Harold busied himself by
assorting his old iron scraps on the back porch, and his mother smiled
as she fancied she heard the boy trying to whistle a tune.
Harold had left the porch before his father came home with the
beefsteak for supper, and Mrs. Jones met her husband with: "Pa Jones,
what could you be thinking of--punishing that boy before the other
children? Do you want to break what little spirit he has? Why, that
child was nearly in hysterics for an hour after you left!"
Mr. Jones hung up his crooked cane, put a stick of wood in the stove,
scraped his pipe with his knife, and blew through the stem.
"I guess he wasn't hurt much," replied the father. Then he added, as
he put a live coal in the pipe: "I s'pose you went an' babied him an'
spoiled it all." There was a puffing pause, after which Mr. Jones
added, "If you'd let him go more, an' didn't worry your head off when
he was out of sight, he'd amount to more."
Mrs. Jones always gave her husband three moves before she spoke.
Pages:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34