Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/221

 "Well, I don't know," sez Tamer. "I remember they laughed at him about it."

"Yes, and mebby laughed away more than they bargained for, Tamer Ann Smith!" sez I. "It is a solemn thing to bring up a child, and a solemner one to whip him for what we learn him to do."

Sez Tamer, real dignified, "I'll tell you one or two more scrapes Jack got into, and if you want to lay 'em to Hamen and me you can, but it will be very unjust, very. It wuz when Jack wuz three or four years old, he wuz out playin' with another little boy of the same age, little Eddie Grey, and Eddie said, about four in the afternoon, that he had got to go home, for his mother wanted to give him a bath, and Jack wuz lonesome and wanted him to stay a spell longer, but Eddie thought he couldn't, for his mother would be waitin'.

"And Jack said he could git all ready for the bath there, and then his mother wouldn't have to take up her time ondressin' him. So, if you'll believe it, Jack took off all the clothes from that boy and sent him home bare naked through the streets with his clothes in a little bundle under his arm. It wuz the town's talk."

"I am fur from thinkin'," sez I, "that it wuz a proper thing to do. But I must say if the town wuz as innocent as Jack, it would be a good thing for the town, and the town wouldn't have talked as much about it."

It wuz a real hot day, and as we sot there talkin' time had slipped round and the sun with it, till it beat right into our our settin'-room winder, and we all presperation and sweat, and Tamer got up and looked in the glass and sez, "Oh, my! how I do look!" And she took out a little pearl-mounted box from her pocket with some rice powder in it and a little mite of a puff brush and