, and trickled in a rivulet around the brim of her father's hat
carelessly laid on the table while he wrestled with a refractory buckle
on his grip, packed ready for his departure. A gasp of dismay escaped
her lips, and Tabitha stood aghast in the midst of the ruin.

"Tabitha Catt!" exclaimed the aunt, appearing that moment in the
doorway.

"Tabitha Catt!" echoed the father, looking up at the sound of the crash.
"I never saw such carelessness in my life. Look at that hat! My best,
too!"

"You needn't have left it on the table; that's no place for your
wardrobe," burst out the indignant Tabitha, sucking one blistered
finger, and frantically shaking her foot where the hot drops of syrup
had clung and burned.

Her unfortunate words were like oil to a flame.

"I'll have none of your impertinence, young lady," cried the irate
father, seizing her by the shoulder none too gently and giving her a
shake. "You deserve to be trounced."

Tabitha's heart stood still. The day of the licking had come at last! He
looked around for a stick, but the woodbox contained nothing but heavy
billets, and her sentence might have been suspended had his eyes not
rested upon his house slippers still lying in the middle of the floor
where he had thrown them upon discovering that fussy Aunt Maria had
packed them among his belongings for his journey to the east. Grabbing
one of these, he struck the trembling girl half a dozen light blows
across the shoulders, and then dropped it, ashamed of himself and
startled at the frightened, pleading look in the black eyes raised to
his in mute appeal. As the first blow descended, the terror in the thin
face gave way to anger, intense, unreasoning; but she stood like a
statue, silent and dry-eyed, until the slipper fell from her father's
hands and he pushed her from him, saying sternly,

"What have you to say for yourself?"

She wheeled and looked at him with scornful eyes; then without a word of
reply, gathered up both slippers from the floor, walked deliberately to
the stove and threw them into the bed of live coals before either father
or aunt could prevent.

"There, Lynne Maximilian Catt!" she exclaimed in a voice tense with
passion, "you will never use that pair to larrup me with again."

He looked at her in silent amazement, and the rage died in his heart.
She was the image of him. How could he blame her for displaying the
passions that he himself had not learned to control? He turned back to
h