no reason why other people should suffer, and, small as this child is
she has made the life of her excellent aunt intolerable by her
unlovable, unsociable, and unchildlike disposition. Children, she was
sent to school to be corrected of her faults, and I order you to stop
your lessons while she is publicly punished. . . ."

With this parade of the spirit of justice, the schoolmistress stepped
back and left me. I knew what she was doing--she was taking her cane out
of her desk which stood by the wall. I heard the desk opened with an
impatient clash and then closed with an angry bang. I was as sure as if
I had had eyes in the back of my head, that the schoolmistress was
holding the cane in both hands and bending it to see if it was lithe and
limber.

I felt utterly humiliated. Standing there with all eyes upon me I was
conscious of the worst pain that enters into a child's experience--the
pain of knowing that other children are looking upon her degradation. I
thought of Aunt Bridget and my little heart choked with anger. Then I
thought of my mother and my throat throbbed with shame. I remembered
what my mother had said, of her little Mary being always a little lady,
and I felt crushed at the thought that I was about to be whipped before
all the village children.

At home I had been protected if only by my mother's tears, but here I
was alone, and felt myself to be so little and helpless. But just as my
lip was beginning to drop, at the thought of what my mother would suffer
if she saw me in this position of infamy, and I was about to cry out to
the schoolmistress: "Don't beat me! Oh! please don't beat me!" a strange
thing happened, which turned my shame into surprise and triumph.