"Perhaps not physically, Zillah," Mrs. Keith answered, with look and tone of grave disapproval, "but morally it certainly would have a very bad effect; you have told him positively that he shall not go out to play to-day, and if you break your word how can you expect him ever to esteem his mother a perfectly truthful woman?"
"You make a very serious matter of it, mother," Zillah said, reddening.
"It is a very serious thing, my dear daughter," Mrs. Keith answered, in her own sweet, gentle way, and with a look of loving sympathy.
She would have said more, but Stuart at that instant renewed the screams he had ceased for a moment, upon perceiving symptoms of relenting on his mother's part.
But Zillah now felt that for very shame she must remain firm. She tried the old plan of coaxing and wheedling—offered picture-books, stories, candy—but nothing would do except the forbidden pleasure, and at length, losing all patience, she took him into another room and gave him the punishment Don would have liked to prescribe on a former occasion. Then she cried over him while he sobbed himself to sleep in her arms.
Having laid him on a bed, covered him carefully, and left a tender kiss on his cheek, she went back to the sitting-room where the others were.
Sitting down by her mother's side she took up her sewing, and tried to go on with it, but her hands trembled and tears dimmed her sight. She dropped the work to wipe them away.
"O mother," she said in quivering tones, "what shall I do with that child? I can never bring him up right, as you have brought up all yours."
"It is a great work, dear, to train up a child in the way he should go," Mrs. Keith answered in sympathizing tones; "and the wisest of us may well ask, 'Who is sufficient for these things?' yet rejoice and take courage in the assurance that 'our sufficiency is of God.' Do not forget His gracious promise, 'If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.'
"Whatever success I may have had in bringing up my children aright has been given me in answer to prayer and in fulfilment of that promise."