‘An’ you’ve come to offer to do it?’

‘That’s just it, ma’am, if you’ll be so kind.’

Mrs. Haddon had a proper sense of her public duties, a due appreciation of the extent of Dick’s wickedness, and a full knowledge of her own inefficiency as a scourger.  She looked down and debated anxiously with herself, carefully avoiding Dick’s eye, and Dick watched her all the time, but did not speak a word or make a single plea.

‘Can’t I beat my own boy?’ she asked angrily.

‘To be certain sure, ma’am, but you’re a small bit of a woman, an’ it don’t seem altogether square dealin’ fer the others to get a proper hidin’ an’ him not.  ’Sides, ‘twould satisfy public feelin’ better if one of us was to lam him.  Sound, ma’am, but judicious,’ said Cairn.

‘Au’ ‘twould save you further trouble,’ added Peterson. ’’Twould ease the mind o’ Mrs. Ben Steven.’  This latter was a weighty argument.  Mrs. Haddon’s terror of the big woman with the terrible tongue was very real.

‘Well, well, well,’ she said pitifully.  ’You—­you won’t beat him roughly?’

‘I’m a father, as you know, ma’am,’ said Peterson, ‘an’ know what’s a fair thing by a boy.’

Cann was unbuckling his belt, and the widow stood trembling, clasping and unclasping her hands.  It was a severe ordeal, but public spirit prevailed.  Mrs. Haddon turned and fled into the house, and shutting herself in her bedroom buried her head in the pillows and wept.

Ten minutes later she was called out, and Dick was delivered into her hands.

‘Better lock him up fer the night,’ said Peterson, looking in a puzzled way at Dick.

The boy bad not shed a tear nor uttered a cry.  He stood stock still under the flailing, and the heart went out of Peterson.  Had Dick fought or struggled, it would have been all right and natural; but this was such a cold-blooded business, and a strange but strongly-felt superiority of spirit in the boy awed and confused the big man, and the beating was but gingerly done after all.

‘Come, Dickie, dear,’ said Mrs. Haddon, in a penitent tone and with much humility.

She led the boy into his room, and there addressed a diffident and halting speech to him.  There were times when Mrs. Haddon had a sense of being younger and weaker than her son, and this was one of them.  She felt it her duty to tell Dick of the sinfulness of his conduct, and to try to justify the punishment, but her words fell ineptly from her lips,—­she knew them to be vain against the power that held Dick silent and tearless, and yet without a trace of boyish stubbornness.  She was not a very wise little woman, or her son’s force of character might have been turned early to good works and profitable courses.