room and turned it into
a pig-stye, and then left it for her to clean up again?"

"She never let me do it," said Charlie with a laugh. "I'll tell you how
she did. She had a tin basin on a shelf on the back gallery, and one of
those great big rolling towels that lasted about a week; and after her
washstand was fixed up in the morning, we knew better than to upset it, I
can tell you."

"Very well, sir: I intend you shall know better than to upset mine, I'll
show you."

In fact, things had come to that pass that I had mentally resolved to
"show" Charlie a great many things. I firmly believed that the secret of
the power that Charlie's mother had exercised over her household, and
still exercised over him in memory, lay in the fact that she made them all
afraid of her: so I firmly resolved that they should all be afraid of me,
poor little me! It is true, I was but twenty, and she was fifty; I was but
a pocket edition of a woman, and she was a _Webster Unabridged_; I had
little meek blue eyes, that dropped to the ground in the most shamefaced
manner if a body did but look at me, and she had hard, cold gray eyes,
that not only looked straight at you, but right through you. Still, I
hoped, notwithstanding these trifling drawbacks, to make myself very
awe-inspiring by dint of a grand assumption of spirit.

To put it into very plain language, I resolved to bully Charlie off his
hobby. He had thrown his mother at my head (figuratively speaking, of
course) until, if she had been present in _propria persona_, I should have
been tempted to try Hiawatha's remarkable feat with his grandmother, and
throw her up against the moon. But as I could not revenge myself upon her
personally, I began to lay deep and subtle plans for inducing Charlie to
leave her to her repose.

As the veritable bell which, in the days when "mother did it," had acted
as a sort of Gabriel's trump, was still extant, minus clapper and handle,
I was enabled to provide myself with its fac-simile. Armed with this
instrument of retribution, I laid me down to sleep by Charlie's side,
gloating in anticipation over my ripening scheme of vengeance.

It was a rare thing for me to wake up before Charlie, but I did manage to
do so on the morning in question, by dint, I think, of a powerful mental
resolution to that effect made the night before. I raised myself very
softly, so as not to disturb my husband's gentle slumbers, and, possessing
myself of my big bell, I laid on