“My management!”

“Frankly, Sarah, I am compelled to affirm that it is.  I have been in your house, now, for three or four months, and must say that I am surprised that your children are as good as they are.  Don’t be angry!  Don’t be fretted with me as you are with every thing in them that doesn’t please you.  I am old enough to hear reason as well as to talk reason.  Let us go back to a point on which I wished to fix your attention, but from which we digressed.  In trying to correct Mary’s habit of rummaging in your work-basket, you boxed her ears, and stormed at her in a most unmotherly way.  Did it do any good?  No; for in ten minutes she was at the same work again.  For this I talked to her kindly, and endeavoured to make her sensible that it was wrong to disturb your basket.”

“And much good it will do!” Mrs. Elder did not feel very amiable.

“We shall see,” said Uncle William, in his calm way.  “Now I propose that we both go out of this room, and let Mary come into it, and be here alone for half an hour.  My word for it, she doesn’t touch your work-basket.”

“And my word for it, she goes to it the first thing.”

“Notwithstanding you boxed her ears for the same fault so recently?”

“Yes, and notwithstanding you reasoned with her, and talked to her so softly but a few moments since.”

“Very well.  The experiment is worth making, not to see who is right, but to see if a gentler mode of government than the one you have adopted will not be much better for your children.  I am sure that it will.”

As proposed, the mother and Uncle William left the room, and Mary was allowed to go into it and remain there alone for half an hour.  Long before this time had expired, Mrs. Elder’s excited feelings had cooled off, and been succeeded by a more sober and reflective state of mind.  At the end of the proposed period, Uncle William came down, and joining his sister, said—­

“Now, Sarah, let us go and see what Mary has been doing; but before we enter the room, let me beg of you not to show angry displeasure, nor to speak a harsh or loud word to Mary, no matter what she may have been about; for it will do no good, but harm.  You have tried it long enough, and its ill effects call upon you to make a new experiment.”

Mrs. Elder, who was in a better state than she was half an hour before, readily agreed to this.  They then went together into the room.  As they entered, Mary looked up at them from the floor where she was, sitting, her face bright with smiles at seeing them.

“You lit”—­

Uncle William grasped quickly the hand of his sister to remind her that she was not to speak harshly to Mary, no matter what she was doing, and was thus able to check the storm of angry reproof that was about to break upon the head of the child, who had been up to the book-case and taken, therefrom two rows of books, with which she was playing on the floor.