“Oh, I see what you are up to,” replied the insolent dame; “you mean to say that if I were your help you would turn me out of your house; but I’m a free-born American, and I won’t go at your bidding.  Don’t think I came here out of regard to you.  No, I hate you all; and I rejoice to see you at the wash-tub, and I wish that you may be brought down upon your knees to scrub the floors.”

This speech only caused a smile, and yet I felt hurt and astonished that a woman whom I had never done anything to offend should be so gratuitously spiteful.

In the evening she sent two of her brood over to borrow my “long iron,” as she called an Italian iron.  I was just getting my baby to sleep, sitting upon a low stool by the fire.  I pointed to the iron upon the shelf, and told the girl to take it.  She did so, but stood beside me, holding it carelessly in her hand, and staring at the baby, who had just sunk to sleep upon my lap.

The next moment the heavy iron fell from her relaxed grasp, giving me a severe blow upon my knee and foot; and glanced so near the child’s head that it drew from me a cry of terror.

“I guess that was nigh braining the child,” quoth Miss Amanda, with the greatest coolness, and without making the least apology.  Master Ammon burst into a loud laugh.  “If it had, Mandy, I guess we’d have cotched it.”  Provoked at their insolence, I told them to leave the house.  The tears were in my eyes, for I felt that had they injured the child, it would not have caused them the least regret.

The next day, as we were standing at the door, my husband was greatly amused by seeing fat Uncle Joe chasing the rebellious Ammon over the meadow in front of the house.  Joe was out of breath, panting and puffing like a small steam-engine, and his face flushed to deep red with excitement and passion.  “You —–­ young scoundrel!” he cried, half choked with fury, “If I catch up to you, I’ll take the skin off you!”

“You —–­ old scoundrel, you may have my skin if you can get at me,” retorted the precocious child, as he jumped up upon the top of the high fence, and doubled his fist in a menacing manner at his father.

“That boy is growing too bad,” said Uncle Joe, coming up to us out of breath, the perspiration streaming down his face.  “It is time to break him in, or he’ll get the master of us all.”

“You should have begun that before,” said Moodie.  “He seems a hopeful pupil.”

“Oh, as to that, a little swearing is manly,” returned the father; “I swear myself, I know, and as the old cock crows, so crows the young one.  It is not his swearing that I care a pin for, but he will not do a thing I tell him to.”

“Swearing is a dreadful vice,” said I, “and, wicked as it is in the mouth of a grown-up person, it is perfectly shocking in a child; it painfully tells he has been brought up without the fear of God.”

“Pooh! pooh! that’s all cant; there is no harm in a few oaths, and I cannot drive oxen and horses without swearing.  I dare say that you can swear too when you are riled, but you are too cunning to let us hear you.”