" said Mrs. Royden, with contracted brows, "you don't know how
your noise shoots through my poor old head! You drive me distracted!"

"Lizzie runned away from me!" bawled a little bareheaded fellow, with a
face red as an Indian's, and not very clean. "The old thing! I'll strike
her."

And the young hero, wiping his face with his sleeve, made a savage dash
at his sister, with intent to scratch and bite. But Lizzie repelled the
attack, holding him at a safe distance by the hair. Upon this, he
shifted his mode of attack, and resorted to kicking, with even worse
success; for, losing his balance, he fell, and came down upon the back
of his head, with a jar which showed him many stars in the firmament of
his cranium.

"I never saw such actions!" muttered Mrs. Royden, putting aside her
sewing with an ominous gesture, and hastening to the scene of the
disaster.

Lizzie dodged, but not in time to avoid several smart cuffs which her
mother bestowed on her ears.

"I couldn't help it,--he threw himself down!" exclaimed the girl,
angrily, and with flashing eyes.

"What did you run away from him for?"

"I didn't! He stopped to throw stones at the birds, and wanted us to
wait. Didn't he, Georgie?"

"Yes, he did," said Georgie. "And he said he'd tell that we ran away
from him, if we didn't wait."

"I didn't!" exclaimed the boy on the floor kicking at a furious rate.

"Stop that!" said Mr. Royden. "Willie, do you hear?"

Willie kicked harder than ever, and began to tear his collar with his
dirty hands. Mrs. Royden could not stand and see that.

"Why don't you govern him, when you set out to?" she asked, rather
sharply, of her husband.

"There! there! Willie will get up and be a good boy," he rejoined,
coaxingly.

But Willie did not; and his mother, picking him up very suddenly, shook
him till his teeth chattered and it seemed his head must fly off; then
set him down in a little chair, so roughly that the dishes rattled in
the pantry as if shaken by an earthquake.

"Mother! mother!" said Mr. Royden, hastily, "you'll injure that child's
brain!"

"I believe in making children mind, when I set about it," replied his
wife, winding up her treatment with a pair of well-balanced cuffs on
Willie's ears.

"There!--how does that set? Will you be so naughty again?"

The urchin was quite breathless and confused; but as soon as he had
gathered strength, and collected his senses, he set up a yell of rage,
which might have been