"Tom! if you don't come to me this instant, I'll almost skin you. Margaret! take them clothes-pins away. Pretty playthings, indeed, for you to give a boy like him! No wonder I have to get a dozen new ones every two or three months."
Margaret now spoke.
"Tommy, you must go up to your mother."
She now took the clothes-pins and commenced putting them into the basket where they belonged. Her words and action had a more instant effect than all the mother's storm of passion. The boy left the kitchen in tears, and went slowly up-stairs.
"Why didn't you come when I called you? Say!"
The mother seized her little boy by the arm the moment he came in reach of her, and dragged rather than led him up-stairs, uttering such exclamations as these by the way:
"I never saw such a child! You might as well talk to the wind! I'm in despair! I'll give up! Humph! clothes-pins, indeed! Pretty playthings to give a child! Every thing goes to rack and ruin! There!"
And, as the last word was uttered, Tommy was thrust into his mother's room with a force that nearly threw him prostrate.
"Now take off them clothes, sir."
"What for, mother? I haven't done any thing! I didn't hurt the clothes-pins; Margaret said I might play with them."