purpose—to be for ever taking Heaven into your confidence about your private affairs, and passionately calling for its interference in your family quarrels and difficulties—to be so familiar with its designs and schemes as to be able to threaten your neighbour with its thunders, and to know precisely its intentions regarding him and others who differ from your infallible opinion—this was the schooling which our simple widow had received from her impetuous young spiritual guide, and I doubt whether it brought her much comfort.
In the midst of his mother's harangue, in spite of it, perhaps, George Esmond felt he had been wrong. “There can be but one command in the house, and you must be mistress—I know who said those words before you,” George said, slowly, and looking very white—“and—and I know, mother, that I have acted wrongly to Mr. Ward.”
“He owns it! He asks pardon!” cries Harry. “That's right, George! That's enough: isn't it?”
“No, it is not enough!” cried the little woman. “The disobedient boy must pay the penalty of his disobedience. When I was headstrong, as I sometimes was as a child before my spirit was changed and humbled, my mamma punished me, and I submitted. So must George. I desire you will do your duty, Mr. Ward.”
“Stop, mother!—you don't quite know what you are doing,” George said, exceedingly agitated.
“I know that he who spares the rod spoils the child, ungrateful boy!” says Madam Esmond, with more references of the same nature, which George heard, looking very pale and desperate.
Upon the mantelpiece, under the Colonel's portrait, stood a china cup, by which the widow set great store, as her father had always been accustomed to drink from it. George suddenly took it, and a strange smile passed over his pale face.
“Stay one minute. Don't go away yet,” he cried to his mother, who was leaving the room. “You—you are very fond of this cup, mother?”—and Harry looked at him, wondering. “If I broke it, it could never be mended, could it? All the tinkers' rivets would not make it a whole cup again. My dear old grandpapa's cup! I have been wrong. Mr. Ward, I ask pardon. I will try and amend.”
The widow
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