"You GOOD thing!" Sam emphatically exclaimed, as he heard her in fierce
conflict on the other side of the door with the nurse who found
her--"You GOOD thing! leave me alone, for I deserve it."

He really was very penitent He was too fond of Dot not to regret the
unexpected degree of distress he had caused her; and Dot made much of
his penitence in her intercessions in the drawing-room.

"Sam is so very sorry," she said; "he says he knows he deserves it. I
think he ought to come down. He is so _very_ sorry!"

Aunt Penelope, as usual, took the lenient side, joining her entreaties
to Dot's, and it ended in Master Sam's being hurriedly scrubbed and
brushed, and shoved into his black velvet suit, and sent down-stairs,
rather red about the eyelids, and looking very sheepish.

"Oh, Dot!" he exclaimed, as soon as he could get her into a corner, "I
am so very, very sorry! particularly about the tea-things."

"Never mind," said Dot, "I don't care; and I've asked for a story, and
we're going into the library." As Dot said this, she jerked her head
expressively in the direction of the sofa, where Aunt Penelope was just
casting on stitches preparatory to beginning a pair of her famous
ribbed socks for Papa, whilst she gave to Mamma's conversation that
sympathy which (like her knitting-needles) was always at the service of
her large circle of friends. Dot anxiously watched the bow on the top
of her cap as it danced and nodded with the force of Mamma's
observations. At last it gave a little chorus of jerks, as one should
say, "Certainly, undoubtedly." And then the story came to an end, and
Dot, who had been slowly creeping nearer, fairly took Aunt Penelope by