rridor sounding the gong.
The soup had already been served. You can imagine the mess! Mrs. Lippett
half killed the child on that occasion, but the killing did nothing to
lessen the temper, which was handed on to me intact.

His father was Italian and his mother Irish; he has red hair and
freckles from County Cork and the most beautiful brown eyes that ever
came out of Naples. After the father was stabbed in a fight and the
mother had died of alcoholism, the poor little chap by some chance or
other got to us. I suspect that he belongs in the Catholic Protectory.
As for his manners--oh dear! oh dear! They are what you would expect. He
kicks and bites and swears. I have dubbed him Punch.

Yesterday he was brought squirming and howling to my office, charged
with having knocked down a little girl and robbed her of her doll. Miss
Snaith plumped him into a chair behind me, and left him to grow quiet,
while I went on with my writing. I was suddenly startled by an awful
crash. He had pushed that big green jardiniere off the window-sill and
broken it into five hundred pieces. I jumped with a suddenness that
swept the ink-bottle to the floor, and when Punch saw that second
catastrophe, he stopped roaring with rage and threw back his head and
roared with laughter. The child is DIABOLICAL.

I have determined to try a new method of discipline that I don't believe
in the whole of his forlorn little life he has ever experienced. I am
going to see what praise and encouragement and love will do. So, instead
of scolding him about the jardiniere, I assumed that it was an accident.
I kissed him and told him not to feel bad; that I didn't mind in the
least. It shocked him into being quiet; he simply held his breath and
stared while I wiped away his tears and sopped up the ink.

The child just now is the biggest problem that the J. G. H. affords.
He needs the most patient, loving, individual care--a proper mother
and father, likewise some brothers and sisters and a grandmother. But I
can't place him in a respectable family until I make over his language
and his propensity to break things. I separated him from the other
children, and kept him in my room all the morning, Jane having removed
to safe heights all destructible OBJETS D'ART. Fortunately, he loves
to draw, and he sat on a rug for two hours, and occupied himself with
colored pencils. He was so surprised when I showed an interest in a
red-and-green ferryboat, with a yellow flag floa