He went home very angry and indignant, and his mother being out, carried his grievance to Mildred. He poured out the whole story without reserve, finishing with "Wasn't it the greatest shame for him to punish me twice for the same thing? I'm sure the loss of my recess was quite enough, 'specially considering that I owned up the minute he asked about it. And then the idea of threatening to flog me! Why, I haven't had a whipping since I was a little bit of a fellow, and I'd think it an awful disgrace to get one now I'm so big; 'specially at school; and I say nobody but father or mother has a right to touch me. And nobody shall; I'll just knock old Peacock down if he dares to try it; that I will!"
"O Cyril, Cyril, you should not be so disrespectful toward the teacher father has set over you!" Mildred said, striving to speak quietly though between indignation at the severity and injustice of the treatment the child had received, and the mirth-provoking idea of his imagining himself able to cope with a man, she found it no easy matter. "I'm really sorry you have wasted your money and broken the rules."
"No, I didn't!" the boy burst out hotly; "he'd never made any rule about it; though he has now, and says I ought to have known and must have known that such things couldn't be allowed."
"Well, that seems rather unreasonable; but I suppose you might if you had stopped to think. You know, Cyril dear, how often father and mother have urged you to try to be more thoughtful."
"Yes, but it seems as if I can't, Milly. How's a fellow to help being thoughtless and careless when it comes so natural?"
"Our wicked natures are what we have to strive against, you know; and God will help us if we ask him," she answered, speaking that holy name in low, reverent tones.
Don, who had waited about the school-house door for Cyril, and walked home by his side, was standing by listening to the talk. "O Milly! we don't like that school!" he said, with a look of weariness and disgust; "It's so hard to have to be shut up there, and obliged to sit still most all day long. Won't you ask father to let us stay at home and say lessons to you again?"
"Oh yes, Milly, do!" Cyril joined in. "Fan's ever so lonesome without us, and we'll be as good as we know how; study hard, and not give you a bit of trouble."
Mildred explained that the arrangements had been made for the summer, and could not now be altered.
"And surely," she concluded, with an encouraging smile, "my two little brothers are not such cowards as to be conquered by little difficulties and discomforts. Don't you know we have to meet such things all the way through life? and the best way is to meet them with a cheerful courage and determination to press on notwithstanding. 'The slothful man saith there is a lion in the way.' 'The way of the slothful man is as an hedge of thorns.' Don't be like him."