“What do you mean by talking back to me?” asked Mrs. Dustin. “I say that night air is poison, and no member of my family, even if he is a young interloper, shall breathe a drop of it, not so long as I can help it. Now, not another word. I know where you’ve been this whole blessed afternoon. You’ve been off with Brace Barlow, who ought to have more sense than to encourage your badness, shooting wells, and trying to get yourself blown into mince-meat, just to make more trouble for me. Yes, I know all about it, in spite of your sly ways. Now, you may go right to bed, and not a morsel of supper shall you have this night, which may be it’ll be a lesson that you will remember for one while, anyway.”
Mr. John Dustin, who sat smoking his evening pipe by an open window, rarely interfered with his wife’s management of the children; but now he spoke up saying:
“That won’t do, wife; you only gave the boy bread and water for his dinner, and it won’t do to send him to bed without any supper. I believe in proper punishment, where it is deserved, as much as anybody; but when it comes to starving, that’s quite another thing. It shall never be said that my brother Richard’s only son was starved in his uncle’s house. So give the boy his supper, and plenty of it. Then you can send him to bed if you see fit.”
Mrs. Dustin knew that when her husband spoke in this tone he meant to be obeyed; so, without a word, she set a plain but bountiful meal before Arthur. From a long experience of bread-and-water punishments and supperless nights the boy was wise enough to eat heartily all that he possibly could, in spite of his heavy heart. He ate in silence, and for some time nobody else spoke; only Dick, who sat at the farther end of the room with the other children, chuckled and made faces behind Arthur’s back, for the benefit, and to the huge delight, of his companions. He was greatly pleased at the result of his tale-bearing; for it was he who, overhearing Arthur tell Cynthia that he had been well-shooting with Brace Barlow, had hurried to the house, and repeated the information, with some picturesque additions of his own devising, to his mother.
Once, during the silent meal, little Cynthia tried to create a diversion in her cousin’s favor by remarking timidly to nobody in particular, but to the company in general, “Arthur says Brace Barlow says he saved his life.”
“Who says what?” inquired Mrs. Dustin, turning quickly and fixing her sharp eyes on the little girl’s face.
“Brace Barlow says—I mean Arthur says Brace Barlow says—he saved his——”
“Oh, fiddlesticks!” interrupted her mother; “you don’t know what you’re talking about. It isn’t at all likely that either of them did anything of the kind. The sort of danger Brace Barlow goes into is quick and sure. When it once gets started there isn’t any chance for life-saving, or for telling of it afterwards. Arthur ought to know better than to go round boasting in that way to a little girl like you, and I should think he’d be ashamed of himself for doing it.”
Arthur listened to this unjust speech with a flushed face and a feeling of choking indignation; but he did not say a word. Young as he was, he had already learned that in a contest with an unreasonable person silence is the weapon of wisdom.
After finishing his supper the forlorn little fellow, accepting his punishment without a murmur, though he could not imagine what wrong he had done, retired to his cot in the woodshed, where he was quickly blessed by the presence of sleep the comforter.