“Who was it that I lately heard
   Repeating an improper word? 
   I do not like to tell her name
   Because she is so much to blame.”

Indeed, she came to thunder the final verse with excellent gestures of condemnatory rage:—­

  “Go, naughty child! and hide your face,
   I grieve to see you in disgrace;
   Go! you have forfeited to-day
   All right at trap and ball to play.”

Nor is it necessary to go back of the very significant lines themselves to explain the circumstance of her having the following for a half-day’s burden:—­

  “Jack Parker was a cruel boy,
   For mischief was his sole employ;
   And much it grieved his friends to find
   His thoughts so wickedly inclined.

  “But all such boys unless they mend
   May come to an unhappy end,
   Like Jack, who got a fractured skull
   Whilst bellowing at a furious bull.”

Nor is there sufficient reason to say why she was often counselled to regard as her model:—­

  “Miss Lydia Banks, though very young,
   Will never do what’s rude or wrong;
   When spoken to she always tries
   To give the most polite replies.”

And painful, indeed, would it be to relate the events of one sad day which culminated in her declaiming at night, with far more than perfunctory warmth, and in a voice scarce dry of tears:—­

  “Miss Lucy Wright, though not so tall,
   Was just the age of Sophy Ball;
   But I have always understood
   Miss Sophy was not half so good;
   For as they both had faded teeth,
   Their teacher sent for Doctor Heath.

  “But Sophy made a dreadful rout
   And would not have hers taken out;
   While Lucy Wright endured the pain,
   Nor did she ever once complain. 
   Her teeth returned quite sound and white,
   While Sophy’s ached both day and night.”

Yet her days were by no means all of reproof nor was her reproof ever harsher than the more or less pointed selections from the moral verses could inflict.  Under the watchful care of Martha she flourished and was happy, her mother in little, a laughing whirlwind of tender flesh, tireless feet, dancing eyes, hair of sunlight that was darkening as she grew older, and a mind that seemed to him she called father a miracle of unfoldment.  It was a mind not so quickly receptive as he could have wished to the learning he tried patiently to impart; he wondered, indeed, if she were not unduly frivolous even for a child of six; for she would refuse to study unless she could have the doll she called Bishop Wright with her and pretend that she taught the lesson to him, finding him always stupid and loth to learn.  He hoped for better things from her mind as she aged, watching anxiously for the buddings of reason and religion, praying daily that she should be increased in wisdom as in stature.  He had become so used to the look of her mother in her face that it now and then gave him an instant of unspeakable joy.  But the sound of his own voice calling her “Prudence” would shock him from this as with an icy blast of truth.