"Don't you worry about the little girl," advised her husband, laying a soothing hand on hers. "She's all right."
"She ought not to quarrel with the other children; or disobey me. You know that, Sam."
"Of course not. You'll have to make her toe the mark, Betty."
"But how, Sam? I've tried. I'm positively worn out trying."
The man pursed up his lips in an inaudible whistle. "Upon my word, Betty," he broke out at length, "I don't know as I can tell you. We don't stand for whipping, you know. Beating small children always struck me as being a relic of the dark ages; and I know I could never stand it to see a child of mine cower before me out of physical fear. But we mustn't spoil 'em!"
"Marian Stanford whips Robbie every time he disobeys," Elizabeth said after a lengthening pause. "She uses a butter-paddle--the kind I make those little round balls with; you know it has a corrugated surface. She says it is just the thing; it hurts so nicely. But I'm sure Robbie Stanford is far naughtier than Carroll ever thinks of being."
Her husband broke into a helpless laugh which he promptly repressed at sight of her indignant face.
"You oughtn't to laugh, Sam," she told him, in a tone of dignified reproof. "You may not think it very important--all this about the children; but it is. It is the most important thing in the world. Even Marian Stanford says----"
"Why do you discuss the subject with her?" interrupted Sam. "You'll never agree; and whatever we do with our own children, we mustn't force our views on other people."
She surveyed him with a mutinous expression about her pretty lips. "Marian doesn't hesitate to criticise my methods," she said. "The last time I saw her she informed me that she had whipped her baby--only think, Sam, her _baby_!"
"Did she use the butter-paddle on the unfortunate infant?" he wanted to know, with a quizzical lift of his eyebrows; "or was it a spanking _au naturel_?"
Elizabeth repressed his levity with a frown. "I wonder at you, Sam, for thinking there's anything funny about it," she said rebukingly. "I didn't feel at all like laughing when she said--with such a superior air--'Livingstone's been getting altogether too much for me lately, and this morning I took the paddle to him and whipped him soundly. He was the most surprised child you ever saw!' Of course I didn't _say_ anything. What could I have said? But I must have looked what I felt, for she burst out laughing. 'Dear, dear!' she said, 'how indignant you do look; but I intend to have _my_ children mind me.' Then she glanced at Richard peacefully pulling the spools out of my basket as if she pitied him for having such a fond, weak mother as to allow it."