ed, and got no answer.

"What's the matter?" she insisted, getting cross.

"I don't know," sobbed the child.

So she tried to reason him out of it, or to amuse him, but without
effect. It made her feel beside herself. Then the father, always
impatient, would jump from his chair and shout:

"If he doesn't stop, I'll smack him till he does."

"You'll do nothing of the sort," said the mother coldly. And then she
carried the child into the yard, plumped him into his little chair, and
said: "Now cry there, Misery!"

And then a butterfly on the rhubarb-leaves perhaps caught his eye, or
at last he cried himself to sleep. These fits were not often, but they
caused a shadow in Mrs. Morel's heart, and her treatment of Paul was
different from that of the other children.

Suddenly one morning as she was looking down the alley of the Bottoms
for the barm-man, she heard a voice calling her. It was the thin little
Mrs. Anthony in brown velvet.

"Here, Mrs. Morel, I want to tell you about your Willie."

"Oh, do you?" replied Mrs. Morel. "Why, what's the matter?"

"A lad as gets 'old of another an' rips his clothes off'n 'is back,"
Mrs. Anthony said, "wants showing something."

"Your Alfred's as old as my William," said Mrs. Morel.

"'Appen 'e is, but that doesn't give him a right to get hold of the
boy's collar, an' fair rip it clean off his back."

"Well," said Mrs. Morel, "I don't thrash my children, and even if I did,
I should want to hear their side of the tale."

"They'd happen be a bit better if they did get a good hiding," retorted
Mrs. Anthony. "When it comes ter rippin' a lad's clean collar off'n 'is
back a-purpose--"

"I'm sure he didn't do it on purpose," said Mrs. Morel.

"Make me a liar!" shouted Mrs. Anthony.

Mrs. Morel moved away and closed her gate. Her hand trembled as she held
her mug of barm.

"But I s'll let your mester know," Mrs. Anthony cried after her.

At dinner-time, when William had finished his meal and wanted to be off
again--he was then eleven years old--his mother said to him:

"What did you tear Alfred Anthony's collar for?"

"When did I tear his collar?"

"I don't know when, but his mother says you did."

"Why--it was yesterday--an' it was torn a'ready."

"But you tore it more."

"Well, I'd got a cobbler as 'ad licked seventeen--an' Alfy Ant'ny 'e
says:

'Adam an' Eve an' pinch-me,
Went down to a river to bade.
Adam an' Eve got drownded,
Who do yer