a while, the importance of this episode shrank to its
true proportions, she never forgot or broke this promise. It would
have been literally impossible for her to touch Billy, even when he was
naughtiest and most exasperating, with other than infinite love, but she
had an even firmness of her own. As sensitive as herself, adoring her to
the point of worship, he was easily punished by her displeasure or five
minutes of enforced quiet on a chair. The note of dread in her voice
as she pleaded: "Hush, oh, hush, Billy, be good; quick, darling, papa's
coming," was always effective. By ceaseless vigilance and indefatigable
patience, she evaded further open rupture until the boy was three years
old.

His shrieks had brought both his father and herself flying to the hog
barn to find him dancing up and down as, frightened and aghast, he
vainly attempted to beat off old Dorcas, a mammoth sow, from one of
her day-old litter on which, having crushed it by accident, she was now
quite deliberately feasting.

"God Almighty!" stormed Martin, hastily putting the little pigs back
into the next pen. "Who let them in to her? That's her old trick."

"I opened the door," confessed Billy, troubled, frank eyes looking
straight into his father's. "They were hungry; that one wanted her
most." And, at the thought of the tragedy he had witnessed, he flung
himself heartbroken into his mother's comforting arms.

"I'll whip you for this," said Martin sternly.

"Oh, please!" protested Rose, gathering the child closer. "Can't you see
he's had a bitter enough lesson? His little heart is full."

"He's got to learn, once and for all, not to meddle with the stock. Come
here."

"No! I won't have it. I'll see to it that he never does a thing like
this again. He's too young to understand. He's never been struck in his
life. You shan't."

Martin's cold blue eyes looked icily into his wife's blazing gray ones.
"Don't act like a fool. Suppose he had gotten in there himself, and had
fallen down--do you think she'd have waited to kill him? Where'd he be
now--like that?" and he pointed to the half-eaten carcass.

Rose shuddered. There it was again--the same, familiar, disarming
plausibility of Martin's, the old trick of making her seem to be the one
in the wrong.

"I wish I had an acre for every good thrashing I got when I was a boy,"
he commented drily. "But in those days a father who demanded obedience
wasn't considered a monster."

"If you only love