“Why have you been crying?” she asked, directly, of Ina.  Her hair was in disorder, as if she had thrust her fingers through it.  It was pushed far off from her temples, making her look much older.  Red spots blazed on her cheeks, her mouth widened in a curious, tense smile.  “Why have you been crying?” she demanded again when Ina did not reply at once to her question.

“Because papa is going to whip Eddy,” Ina said then, with directness, “and I know he will whip him very hard, because he has been stealing.”

“Well, what is that to cry about?” asked Mrs. Carroll, ruffling with indignation.  “Don’t you think the boy’s father knows what is best for his own son?  He won’t hurt him any more than he ought to be hurt.”

“I only hope he will hurt himself as much as he ought to be hurt,” muttered Anna Carroll on the divan.  Mrs. Carroll gave her sister-in-law one look, then swept out of the room.  The tail of her rose-colored silk curled around the door-sill, and she was gone.  She passed through the hall, and out of the front-door to the lawn, whence she strolled around the house, keeping on the side farthest from the room occupied by her son.

“Hark!” whispered Ina, a moment after her mother had gone.

They all listened, and a swishing sound was distinctly audible.  It was the sound of regular, carefully measured blows.

“Amy went out so she should not hear,” whispered Ina.  “Oh, Dear!”

“It is harder for her than for anybody else because she has to uphold Arthur for doing what she knows is wrong,” said Anna Carroll on the divan.  She spoke as if to herself, pressing her hands to her ears.

“Papa is doing just right,” cried Charlotte, indignantly.  “How dare you speak so about papa, Anna?”

“There is no use in speaking at all,” said Anna, wearily.  “There never was.  I am tired of this life and everything connected with it.”

Ina was weeping again convulsively.  She also had put her hands to her ears, and her piteous little wet, quivering face was revealed.

“There is no need of either of you stopping up your ears,” said Charlotte.  “You won’t hear anything except the—­blows.  Eddy never makes a whimper.  You know that.”

She spoke with a certain pride.  She felt in her heart that a whimper from her little brother would be more than she herself could bear, and would also be more culpable than the offence for which he was being chastised.  She said that her brother never whimpered, and yet she listened with a little fear that he might.  But she need have had no apprehension.  Up in his bedroom, standing before his father in his little thin linen blouse, for he had pulled off his jacket without being told, directly when he had first entered the room, the little boy endured the storm of blows, not only without a whimper, but without a quiver.