Page:Stories told to a child.djvu/67

 'She's a naughty child,' said the mistress, 'and it is just she should be punished.'

'Yes, ma'am,' Sally ventured to say, 'only somehow if you're angry when you do it, won't she think you don't love her?'

'Dear me, Sally, how foolish you are! I don't want her to think I love her when she's naughty, but only when she's good.'

'O, don't you, ma'am?' replied Sally, doubtfully. 'Well, ma'am, no doubt but you know best.'

'I must be just,' continued the mistress; 'she shall be indulged when she's good, but I shall never overlook it when she's naughty.'

The mistress was as good as her word; and as little Rie was often naughty in her childish way, it followed that she was often punished; till once seeing her dear Sally crying, after the mistress had been more than usually angry, she climbed up her knee, and made many protestations that she would never be naughty any more and make Sally cry.

Poor little Rie, she had her troubles; but she loved Sally dearly; and perhaps, child as she was, she had sometimes, when the rain was pouring down, and the wind howling outside, a dim perception that she had been saved from a dreary, toilsome, and evil life, and it was strangely better to sit with Sally in the cheerful kitchen, and hear the rosebuds tapping, than to wander down and down those ever lengthening roads, cold, and hungry, and neglected.

But discipline, though it may be harsh, does not fail to produce a certain good result. Little Rie understood very soon that she was never to be punished Rh