ENOUGH of this!" cried Alice. "Give that face cloth to me. If you are not old enough to wash your face I shall wash it for you!"
His face was set. He tried to wriggle out of her grasp. She held him firmly; firmly she washed his face—one might almost have said violently. Certainly she did a thorough piece of work. When she got through he was crying bitterly. He wrenched himself away from her and ran up-stairs to the sheltering darkness. Alice could hear him sobbing, and she was so blind,—so angry at Robert, that she didn't know why he was crying.
The real matter was his manly dignity had been wounded. Robert had not been allowed to wash his own face. He had been washed like a baby. His dignity was outraged and, worse and worse, he couldn't keep from crying. Manly dignity is a terrible burden at Robert's age.
Alice knew she shouldn't have done it. She knew she had wounded him in some vulnerable spot, for he rarely cried. She couldn't dismiss it lightly when Robert's father asked her what the matter was with Robert by saying,
"Oh, he's just been a naughty little boy!" That's the advantage that children have over you. Alice felt naughty and Robert didn't. The Distressing Doubt was back again. She tried in vain to placate her conscience and her self-reproaches with the specious consolation:
"Well, he should have washed his face quicker." And conscience only demanded of her "Why?" So
