_Manoeuvring and Artifice_.

1. Many mothers manage their children by means of tricks and contrivances,
more or less adroit, designed to avoid direct issues with them, and to
beguile them, as it were, into compliance with their wishes. As, for
example, where a mother, recovering from sickness, is going out to take
the air with her husband for the first time, and--as she is still
feeble--wishes for a very quiet drive, and so concludes not to take little
Mary with her, as she usually does on such occasions; but knowing that if
Mary sees the chaise at the door, and discovers that her father and mother
are going in it, she will be very eager to go too, she adopts a system of
manoeuvres to conceal her design. She brings down her bonnet and shawl by
stealth, and before the chaise comes to the door she sends Mary out into
the garden with her sister, under pretense of showing her a bird's nest
which is not there, trusting to her sister's skill in diverting the child's
mind, and amusing her with something else in the garden, until the chaise
has gone. And if, either from hearing the sound of the wheels, or from
any other cause, Mary's suspicions are awakened--and children habitually
managed on these principles soon learn to be extremely distrustful and
suspicious--and she insists on going into the house, and thus discovers the
stratagem, then, perhaps, her mother tells her that they are only going to
the doctor's, and that if Mary goes with them, the doctor will give her
some dreadful medicine, and compel her to take it, thinking thus to deter
her from insisting on going with them to ride.

As the chaise drives away, Mary stands bewildered and perplexed on the
door-step, her mind in a tumult of excitement, in which hatred of the
doctor, distrust and suspicion of her mother, disappointment, vexation, and
ill humor, surge and swell among those delicate organizations on which the