from weeding, and the weather was warm, and I can feel the way my
back would sting and creak, now! I would want to stop, often, but I
thought of mother in church with that bonnet, and I kept on!
There's the place where Seeds, the grocer that used to trust us,
had his store; it was his children had the scarlet fever,
and mother went to nurse them. My! but how dismal it was at home!
We always got more whippings when mother was away. Your grandfather
was a good man, too honest for this world, and he loved every one
of his seven children; but he brought us up to fear him and the Lord.
We feared him the most, because the Lord couldn't whip us!
He never whipped us when we did anything, but waited until next day,
that he might not punish in anger; so we had all the night to
anticipate it. Did I ever tell you of the time he caught me in a lie?
I was lame for a week after it. He never caught me in another lie."

"I think he was cruel; I can't help it, papa," cried Esther,
with whom this was an old argument, "still it did good, that time!"

"Oh, no, he wasn't cruel, my dear," said Armorer, with a queer
smile that seemed to take only one-half of his face, not answering
the last words; "he was too sure of his interpretation of the Scripture,
that was all. Why, that man just slaved to educate us children;
he'd have gone to the stake rejoicing to have made sure that we
should be saved. And of the whole seven only one is a church member.
Is that the road?"

They could see a car swinging past, on a parallel street,
its bent pole hitching along the trolley-wire.