"He won't like it," gasped Janet, in dismay.
"Then he'll have to get along without the liking," said Betsy Simmons calmly, as she lifted Tommy into a convenient position.
"Tommy will be a good boy, won't he?" said Janet coaxingly. "Mother will give him a nice bun if he is good."
"Give him a bun for having his face washed!" said Mrs. Simmons. "And a halfpenny for stopping crying! He's like to cost you dear at this rate, Mrs. Humphrey. Haven't you got any better use for your pennies than that?"
Janet sat rebuked; ashamed yet angry. Tommy yelled, but he yelled in vain. Mrs. Simmons quietly soaped him, scrubbed him, sponged him, and dried him. A clean though tearful little boy was presently seated on a chair, and told to "be good."
"He wouldn't let me do all that, now," said Janet.
Mrs. Simmons turned round quite indignantly. "Wouldn't let!" she said. "A baby of three not let his mother do as she likes with him! What on earth do you mean, Mrs. Humphrey?"
"Well, I don't know,—it doesn't seem as if I could manage them like you do," said Janet.
"Maybe not,—because you don't set to work the right way," said Mrs. Simmons. "Give in to a child because he cries, or bribe him to be good, and your mastery over him is gone. But once make him understand that you mean what you say, and that he has to do what he's told, and your trouble's at an end. Why, dear me, I wonder what my mother would have said, when I was a girl, if any one of us—and she had a dozen children—had set up for a moment against her will. Not we! There wasn't such a thing known among us. Mother's will was law, and no mistake. But for all that we loved her more than I can tell, and she did toil for us. The world never looked the same to me, Mrs. Humphrey, since mother died."
"Everybody isn't like that, though," Janet said hopelessly, as Mrs. Simmons placed the teapot on the table.