text was his Sunday-school teacher's pride. Yet he had collected other
scraps of useful information as he journeyed through life. One of
these was a perfectly practical familiarity with the official road map
to his mother's heart. Therefore, when he crossed the threshold of the
Jones home Harold began at once to weep dolefully.

"Harold Jones, what do you mean by such conduct?" asked his mother.

The boy stood by the window long enough to see that his father had
turned the corner toward the town. Then he fell on the floor, and
began to bewail his lot, refusing to answer the first question his
mother asked, but telling instead how "all the other boys in this town
can go swimmin' when they want to," hinting that he wouldn't care, if
papa had only just come and brought him home, but that papa--and this
was followed by a vocal cataract of woe that made the dish-pans ring.

He noted that his mother bent over him and said, "My poor boy;" at
which sign little Harold punctured the levees of his grief again,
and said he "never was goin' to face any of the boys in this town
again"--he "just couldn't bear it." Mrs. Jones paused in her work at
this, put down a potato that she was peeling, and stood up stiffly,
saying in a freezing tone, "Harold Jones, you don't mean to tell me
that your father punished you in front of those other little boys?"

Her son only sobbed and nodded an affirmative, and gave lusty voice to
the tearful wish that he was dead. Mrs. Jones stooped to the floor and
took her child by an arm, lifting him to his feet. She smoothed his
hair and took him with her to the big chair in the dining-room, where
she raised his seventy pounds to her lap, saying as she did so,
"Mama's boy will soon be too big to hold." At that the spoiled child