ese ideas occurred to Mrs. Thorpe, who possessed no ideas. But she
had certain substitutes which were infinitely more useful in the present
emergency: she had instincts.

"Look up at me, Zack," she said, returning to the bath, and sitting in
the chair by its side; "I want to say something to you."

The boy obeyed directly. His mother opened her lips, stopped suddenly,
said a few words, stopped again, hesitated--and then ended her first
sentence of admonition in the most ridiculous manner, by snatching at
the nearest towel, and bearing Zack off to the wash-hand basin.

The plain fact was, that Mrs. Thorpe was secretly vain of her child. She
had long since, poor woman, forced down the strong strait-waistcoats of
prudery and restraint over every other moral weakness but this--of all
vanities the most beautiful; of all human failings surely the most
pure! Yes, she was proud of Zack! The dear, naughty, handsome,
church-disturbing, door-kicking, house-flooding Zack! If he had been
a plain-featured boy, she could have gone on more sternly with her
admonition: but to look coolly on his handsome face, made ugly by dirt,
tears, and rumpled hair; to speak to him in that state, while soap,
water, brush and towel, were all within reach, was more than the mother
(or the woman either, for that matter) had the self-denial to do! So,
before it had well begun, the maternal lecture ended impotently in the
wash-hand basin.

When the boy had been smartened and brushed up, Mrs. Thorpe took him on
her lap; and suppressing a strong desire to kiss him on both his round,
shining cheeks, said these words:--

"I want you to learn your lesson, because you will please _me_ by
obeying your papa. I have always been kind to _you,_--now I want you to
be kind to _me."_

For the first time, Zack hung down his head, and seemed unprepared with
an answer. Mrs. Thorpe knew by experience what this symptom meant. "I
think you are beginning to be sorry for what you have done, and are
going to be a good boy," she said. "If you are, I know you will give me
a kiss." Zack hesitated again--then suddenly reached up, and gave his
mother a hearty and loud-sounding kiss on the tip of her chin. "And now
you will learn your lesson?" continued Mrs. Thorpe. "I have always tried
to make _you_ happy, and I am sure you are ready, by this time, to try
and make _me_ happy--are you not, Zack?"

"Yes, I am," said Zack manfully. His mother took him at once to the
table, on w