Mrs. Jones paused in her work at
this, put down a potato that she was peeling, and stood up stiffly,
saying in a freezing tone, "Harold Jones, you don't mean to tell me
that your father punished you in front of those other little boys?"

Her son only sobbed and nodded an affirmative, and gave lusty voice to
the tearful wish that he was dead. Mrs. Jones stooped to the floor and
took her child by an arm, lifting him to his feet. She smoothed his
hair and took him with her to the big chair in the dining-room, where
she raised his seventy pounds to her lap, saying as she did so,
"Mama's boy will soon be too big to hold." At that the spoiled child
only renewed his weeping and clutched her tightly. There, little by
little, he forgot the mishaps of the day. There the anguish lifted
from his heart, and when his mother asked, "Harold, why did you go
into the water when we told you not to?" the child only shook his
head, and, after repeated questioning, his answer came,--

"Well, they asked me, mom."

"Who asked you?" persisted Mrs. Jones.

"Piggy Pennington and Jimmy Sears," returned the lad.

[Illustration: _Mrs. Jones stooped to the floor and took her child by
an arm_.]

To the query, "Well, do you have to do everything they ask you to,
Harold?" the lad's answer was a renewal of the heart-breaking sobs.
These softened the mother's heart, as many and many a woman's heart
has been melted through all the ages. She soothed the truant child and
petted him, until the cramping in his throat relaxed sufficiently to
admit of the passage of an astonishingly large slice of bread and
butter and sugar. After it was disposed of, Harold busied himself by
assorting his old iron scraps on the back porch, and his mother smiled
as she fancied she heard the boy trying to whistle a tune.

Harold had left the porch before his father came home with the
beefsteak for supper, and Mrs. Jones met her husband with: "Pa Jones,
what could you be thinking of--punishing that boy before the other
children? Do you want to break what little spirit he has? Why, that
child was nearly in hysterics for an hour after you left!"

Mr. Jones hung up his crooked cane, put a stick of wood in the stove,
scraped his pipe with his knife, and blew through the stem.

"I guess he wasn't hurt much," replied the father. Then he added, as
he put a live coal in the pipe: "I s'pose you went an' babied him an'
spoiled it all." There was a puffing pause, after which Mr. Jon