Mr. Green groaned in response, and drove on. Mrs. Lamb went in, and stood at her sitting-room window and watched the lights over at the Green house. They flitted from one room to another all night. At dawn Aunt Susy ran over with her shawl over her head. She was wan and hollow-eyed.
"They haven't found a sign of her," said she. "They've looked everywhere. The Pitkin boy's been down the well. Mr. Pitkin has just come over from the village, and a lot of men are going out to hunt for her as soon as it's light. If Mehitable only would tell!"
"I can't make her," said Mrs. Lamb, despairingly.
"I know what I think you'd ought to do," said Aunt Susy, in a desperate voice.
"What?"
"Whip her."
"Oh, Susy, I can't! I never whipped her in my life."
"Well, I don't care. I should." Aunt Susy had the tragic and resolute expression of an inquisitor. She might have been proposing the rack. "I think it is your duty," she added.
Mrs. Lamb sank into the rocking-chair and wept; but within an hour's time Mehitable stood shivering and sobbing in her night-gown, and held out her pretty little hands while her mother switched them with a small stick. Aunt Susy was crying down in the sitting-room. "Did she tell?" she inquired, when her sister, quite pale and trembling, came in with the stick.
"No," replied Mrs. Lamb. "I never will whip that dear child again, come what will." And she broke the stick in two and threw it out of the window.