He made as if he were going to sit down at the table, but she said: "No, you mustn't have any tea. Go to your room and undress. You've lied and you've disobeyed. I'll have to whip you." Her heart was thumping so that she thought she was going to faint. He lifted his chin a little higher and said: "Very well, the circus was very good. It was quite worf this." He marched out of the room and left her sick and quivering at her duty. After she had heard him bang his door, she realised that Roger was asking her again and again if he might have some more cherry jam, and she answered, sighing deeply, "No, dear, it's too rich. If you have any more you'll be ill," and she rose from the table and took the jar into the larder. She decided to clear away tea first, but that only meant carrying the tray backwards and forwards twice, and after a few moments she found herself standing in the middle of the kitchen, shaking with terror, while the other child whined about her skirts and stretched up its abhorrent little arms. She pushed it aside, qualifying the harsh movement with some insincere endearment, and went to Richard's room and walked in blindly, saying: "I must whip you—you've broken the law, and if you do that you must be punished." Out of the darkness before her came the voice of the tiny desperado: "Very well. It was quite worf this. Mother, I'm ready. Come on and whip me." She pulled down the blinds and set herself to the horrid task, and kept at it hardly, unsparingly, until she felt she had really hurt him. Then she said, with what seemed to be the last breath in her heart-shattered body: "There, you see, whenever you break the law people will hurt you like this. So take notice." She moved about the room, leaving it as it should be left for the night, opening the windows and folding up the counterpane, while he lay face downwards on his pillow. Just as she was closing the door he called softly:
"Mummie!"
She continued to close it, and he cried:
"Mummie!"
But she remained quite quiet so that he thought she had gone. After a minute she heard him throw himself over in the bed and kick the clothes and sob fiercely, "Gah! Why can't she come when I call her?"
She was back by his bedside in a second, and his arms were round her neck and he was sobbing:
"Mummie, mummie, I know I've been naughty!" And as he felt the wetness of her face he cried out, "Oh, mummie, have I made you cry? I will be good! I will be good! I'll never make you cry again! I know I was a beast to go 'cos you really were frightened of us getting measles, but oh, mummie, I did so want to see a tiger!"
They clung to each other, weeping, and he said things into her neck that were far more babyish than usual and yet fiercely manly, and they almost melted into each other in the hot flow of loving tears.
"You were quite right to whip me," he told her. "I wouldn't have believed you were really cross if you hadn't hurt me." Presently, when he was lying quietly in her arms, all sticky sweetness like toffee, he sighed, "Oh, darling, the circus was lovely! There were such clever people. There was a Cossack horseman who picked up handkerchiefs off the ground when he was riding at full speed, and there was a most beautiful lady in pink satin. Mummie, you'd look lovely in pink satin!—and she'd bells on her legs and arms, and she waggled them and it made a tune. That was lovely, but I liked the animals best. Oh, darling, the lions!"
She rebuked him for his continued enjoyment of an illicit spectacle that ought now to be regarded only as material for repentance, but he protested: "Mummie, you are mean. Now you've whipped me for going, surely I've a right to enjoy it." But he lay back and just gave himself up to loving her. "Oh, you beautiful mummie. You've such lots and lots of hair. If there were two little men just as big as my fingers, they could go into your hair, one at each ear, and walk about it like people do in the African forests, couldn't they? And they'd meet in your parting, and one would say to the other, 'Mr. Livingstone, I presume?'" They both laughed and hugged each other, and he presently fell asleep as suddenly as children do.