“Yes, I did start it,” answered Trouble, hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry. “What for you take me off my horsie?” he asked.
“Horsie? Say, you don’t want to ride this dangerous kind of horse again!” cried the engineer. “That big saw might have cut you!”
He, too, spoke sternly, and Trouble decided that all fun had gone out of the world. He began to cry. He cried hard, too.
By this time his mother, who had missed him, had come out in search of him. It took her only a few moments to understand what had happened.
“Trouble, you are a naughty boy!” she said.
“I not naughty!” he sobbed. “I wanted a wide—a wide on my saw horsie!”
“Yes, you were bad,” went on his mother, with a grave face. “I told you never to come to the mill alone, and you didn’t mind. I told you never to touch a handle or anything, and you didn’t mind. You are a bad boy!”
Trouble sobbed again, looked from one to the other of the three stern faces in a circle about him.
“Ye—yes, I—I is a bad boy!” he admitted.
“And you must be whipped,” his mother told him.