There you had the reason. For no other cause on earth but temper—eating well, sleeping well, no excuse in life for it—Sara for two or three days would fill all the earth with her clamor. Then the storm would go by and the nursery would again be pleasant with the sweet noises of happy children. It didn't happen often, but these "spells," as her grandmother called them, would come with the suddenness of tropical storms. They often speculated "Where she got it from," but though she had red-headed and hot-tempered ancestors there was no one who had had this cyclonic quality. There was nothing one could do; no way to please Sara. If the storm happened in mid-street you could but hurry her home, so that at least she might do her howling in private. Leaving her alone to cry it out did no good. Humoring her did no good. When she began to talk, reasoning did no good. Scolding her did no good. Nothing did her any good. Robert told her what he thought about it when she was two years old.
"She's a bad girl," said he, "and ought to be spanked."
"Mercy, Alice!" said Tom's mother, "don't spank the child. Violent as she is, she'd be liable to break a blood vessel, crying."
"Of course I sha'n't spank her," said Alice.
The Mooted Question had been answered forever for the Marceys. No spanking in that family. It humiliated the Spanker. It degraded the Spankee. There wasn't anything the Marceys could say bad enough about spanking. It was the resort of the weak. It was a confession of failure. Children needed spanking only in homes where there was no true discipline.
Here we come to a dark page—one without a moral, one that holds even an immoral in its somber web.
It had been a terrible afternoon. Laurie was out.
