"Poor little Nellie!" gasped Dorothy at length. "She hadn't the least idea that she was doing anything wrong. How can mother punish her?"
Louise made no answer, because there seemed to her nothing that it was safe to say.
"Oh, mamma, don't, please don't!" wailed Nellie. "I didn't mean to do anything wrong."
Then did Dorothy's courage rise to the point of action.
She went swiftly over to that closed door, pushed it open, and spoke with eager, tremulous voice:—
"Oh, mother, don't whip Nellie; I know she didn't mean to do anything wrong."
"Dorothy Morgan!" said the firm, stern voice of her mother, never colder or firmer than at that moment, "Leave this room, and close the door immediately."
And Dorothy immediately obeyed. She always obeyed her mother; but is it probable that just at that moment she respected her?
Louise leaned her head against the rain-bespattered window-pane, and looked out into the dreariness, and waited; and Dorothy got back on her perch and leaned her head against the cupboard door, and wiped a distressed tear from her face with the back of her hand, and waited. It was not that either of those misery-stricken waiters feared injury to Nellie, at least not to the physical part of her. Mrs. Morgan was not in that sense cruel. They were well aware that the punishment would not be unduly severe; but, nevertheless, there was that miserable sense of degradation. Was it possible to avoid the conclusion that the mother was angry, and was venting the pent-up irritations of the day on her defenceless child? Each wail of Nellie's sank the mother lower in the estimation of daughter and daughter-in-law: the latter, realizing and struggling with the feeling, trying to reason herself into the belief that Mrs. Morgan must know what was best for her child, and with strange inconsistency trying to determine whether she could ever respect her again; Dorothy, not conscious of the name of the miserable feelings that held her in possession, but knowing that life seemed very horrid just then. All these phases of misery occupied little room in time—one's heart works rapidly. Quiet came to the little bedroom, broken only by an occasional sob, and presently the administrator of punishment came out, closing the door after her.
"Pick up those pieces and throw them away," was her first command to Dorothy. "One would have supposed you could have done that without waiting to be told. And don't climb up there again; I will finish the work myself. If I had done it in the first place, instead of setting you at it, I would have saved myself a great deal of trouble."