mma listened to long accounts of how "me
and Dick Ray played marbles," and "us fellers cracked the whip." There
was another thing that he used to tell mamma about, something that
in those first days he always spoke of in the most subdued tones,
and that--I am sorry to record it of any school, much more a Cheyenne
school--was the numerous whippings that were administered to various
little boys and girls. There was something painfully fascinating about
those whippings to restless, mischievous little Tommy who had never
learned the art of sitting still. He knew his turn might come at any
moment and one night he cried out in his sleep: "Oh, dear, what will
become of me if I get whipped!" But as the days passed on and this
possible retribution overtook him not, his fears gradually forsook him,
and instead of speaking pitifully of "those poor little children who
were whipped," he mentioned them in a causal off-hand manner as, "those
cry-babies, you know?" One afternoon mamma saw him sitting on the porch,
slapping his little fat hand with a strap. "Tommy, child, what in the
world are you doing?" she asked.

Into his pocket he thrust the strap, and the pink cheeks grew pinker
still as their owner answered:

"I--I--was just seeing--how hard I could hit my hand--without crying;"
and he disappeared around the side of the house before mamma could ask
any more questions.

The next day Tommy's seatmate, Dicky Ray, was naughty in school, and
Miss Linnet called him up, opened her desk, took out a little riding
whip--it was a bright blue one--and then and there administered
punishment. And because he cried, when recess came, Tommy said: "Isn't
Dick Ray just a reg'lar girl cry-baby?" (He had learned that word from
some of the big boys, but, mind you! he never dared to say it before his
mother.)

Dick's face flushed with anger. "Never you mind, Tommy Brown," said
he, "Just wait till you get whipped and we'll see a truly girl-cry-baby
then, won't we, Daisy?"

And blue-eyed Daisy, who was the idol of their hearts, nodded her curly
little head in the most emphatic manner, and said she "wouldn't be one
bit s'prised if he'd holler so loud that hey would hear him way down in
Colorado."

Tommy stood aghast! for, really and truly, he wasn't quite so
stony-hearted a little mortal as he appeared to be; he had been secretly
rather sorry for Dick, but--he wanted Daisy to think that he himself was
big and manly, and he had the opinion that thi