“Certainly. You saw how severely he was punished this time. He doesn’t want that kind of thing to happen again.”{85}
{85}
“But I don’t understand. You did nothing to him. You didn’t even scold him.”
“Of course I didn’t. Scolding is foolish. Only weak-minded people scold.”
“But I shouldn’t have thought Ben fine enough or sensitive enough to feel the sort of punishment you gave him. Why should he mind it?”
“Oh, everybody minds being looked at in that way—everybody who has been doing wrong. You see one always knows when one has done wrong. Ben knew, and when I looked at him he saw that I knew too. So it hurt him. You’ll see now that he’ll never bring you or me a horse on which we can soil our handkerchiefs.”
“Where did you learn all that?” asked Arthur, full of curiosity and interest.
“I suppose my father taught me. He taught me everything I know. I remember that whenever I was naughty, he would look at me over his spectacles and make me ever so sorry. You see even if I knew I had done wrong I didn’t think much about it, till father looked at me. After that I would think about it all day and all night, and be, oh, so sorry! Then I would try not to displease my father again.”{86}
{86}
“Your father must have been a very wise as well as a very good man!”
“He was,” and two tears slipped from the girl’s eyes as she recalled the father who had been everything to her from her very infancy. “That is why I always try, now that he is gone, never to do anything that he would have disliked. I always think ‘I won’t do that, for if I do father will look at me.’ You see I must be a great deal more careful than other girls.”
“Why? I see no reason for that.”
“That’s because you don’t know about—about things. I was born bad, and if I’m not more careful than other girls have to be, I shall be very bad when I grow up.”
“Will you forgive me if I say I don’t believe that?” asked Arthur.
“Oh, but it’s true,” answered the girl, looking him straight in the face, with an expression of astonishment at his incredulity.
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