use my whip as soon as they touched the tree. So they laughed and
sneered at me and said that they were neither afraid of me nor of my
whip. As soon as our lessons were done at twelve o'clock, they ran to
the garden and, getting the whip I had hidden in the hallway, I ran after
them. Edwin was already half way up the tree and Eugene was just
beginning to climb it. First I only threatened and tried in that way to
force Edwin down and keep Eugene from going further. But they kept on
sneering at me till Edwin had reached the first branch and was shaking it
so hard that the lovely plums came spattering to the ground. I got so
furious at that that I began to beat first the boy higher up and then the
lower one. First, Edwin tumbled down on top of Eugene and then they both
ran away moaning, while I kept on striking them. They left the plums on
the ground and I followed them."

"It is terrible, Bruno, that such scenes have to come up between you all
the time," the mother lamented. "You are always the one who gets wild
and loses control. It is hard to excuse that, even if your intention is
good, Bruno. I wish I could keep you boys apart."

"It was a good thing he became furious at them to-day, mother," Kurt
remarked. "You see it shows that even two can't get the better of him.
If he had not been so mad, the two would have been stronger, and our poor
Rector would have lost his plums."

It was hard to tell if this explanation comforted the mother. She had
gone out with a sign to attend to Bruno's belated lunch. The time was
already near at hand when all the children had to get back to school.

When that same evening the little ones were happily playing and the big
children were busy with their school work, Kurt stole up to his mother's