Here Rollo began to look pretty sober. He knew that he had done what he had very often been forbidden to do.
“Now,” said Jonas, “we can wait and tell your mother about it, when she comes out, or we can just settle it all among ourselves.”
“How?” said Rollo, with an anxious look.
“Why, I can dry the paper and the sand,” said Jonas, “if you and Nathan will only punish the boys.”
“How shall we do it?” asked Rollo, looking up with a faint and doubtful smile.
“I think a pretty good punishment,” said Jonas, “would be for you and Nathan to go and sit in two corners of the room, with your faces to the wall, until I get the paper and sand dry—if you think that would be punishment enough.”
“Well,” said Rollo,—his eye brightening at the idea of winding up so unpleasant a business so easily,—“well, Nathan, let’s go.”
Nathan was ready, and so he climbed down from his high chair, and as Rollo went to one corner of the room, he went to the other, and they took their places, as Jonas had directed; only Nathan could not resist the temptation of looking round, now and then, to see how Jonas got on with the drying of the paper. They, however, bore their self-inflicted punishment very patiently; and when Jonas had got the paper dried, and the table wiped down, and every thing replaced as it was before, he told them that it was time for them to get up again. The punishment was not very severe, it is true; but then, it was probably a pretty efficacious one, in respect to its effect in impressing it upon Nathan’s mind that he must not touch things without leave, and upon Rollo’s, that, when Nathan is doing wrong, he must not set him right by violence.
In a short time after this, the things were all ready upon the table, the chairs were placed around it, and Rollo went to call his father. He found him writing a letter. As soon as he reached the end of a sentence, he came out, and took his place at the table. Rollo’s mother sat next to him at the same side of the table, and Jonas and Dorothy in two chairs, on the opposite side. Rollo then was placed at one end of the table, and Nathan, in his high chair, at the other.
Just then, however, Rollo’s mother observed that the table was wet a little.