Sara had been howling for two days. When she was a little baby one could stand it. Now that she could talk it seemed unbearable. If asked what was the matter, she screeched with rage. When Alice washed her face she screamed. Alice had left her on the bed a moment and told Robert to watch her. When she came up-stairs again she heard Robert saying:
"There, darling, there," in the tone of a dove, while Sara, her face red, her curls bobbing, her finger pointed at Robert, screamed at him,
"Go! Go!" and this because he was keeping her on the bed, as he had been told to. Then Sara leaned forward and slapped Robert. She slapped him twice. Robert turned a patient, smiling face toward his mother.
"She does this when she gets mad," he explained. Red anger arose in Alice.
"You're a bad, naughty baby," she said, and here for good and all did Alice Marcey lose her complacency, for she picked up the screaming Sara, put her over her knee and spanked her smartly.
She did the unpardonable thing. She spanked a little helpless child in anger.
The howls of Sara subsided. She sobbed a little, pathetically and limply. Then she murmured:
"Sweet Mother." She kissed her mother. "Sweet buddie," she murmured, "sweet Bobby." She kissed Robert. She was a reformed infant. She wanted to kiss all the world. She swam in a sea of benevolence. When Alice dressed her and took her out of doors she fell to picking little nosegays of wild flowers, which she presented to Laurie and then to her mother. She was sweeter than honey in the honeycomb.
In the domestic life figs do sometimes come of thistles. Alice had struck her child in anger and, lo, an angel was born on earth, nor did Sara howl again—not for
