Page:The New-Year's Bargain (1884).djvu/40

 none but her own,—or his, which, as you may suppose, he wasn't very likely to offer her!

Oh,' Mrs. Bear used to say to herself, 'if I only had Master Jack and Miss Gretchen here, wouldn't I give them a lesson?' And as Greedy, for all his fault-finding, had such a big appetite, that provisions were growing scarce, two or three bad children, needing to be eaten by way of example, would have been convenient. Every thing went wrong in the once happy home. The brothers and sisters were always sulking in corners, and complaining to each other in low growls of the way in which Greedy had treated them. Roll-about lost her plump sides, and grew thin. Snap was finding out the advantages of bad temper, and beginning to carry on like Greedy. At last Mrs. Bear declared she would stand it no longer.

You are grown up,' she said: 'go out and shift for yourself. As long as you were good and content, I was glad to have you here: now