angry! Don't be fretted with me as you are with every thing in them
that doesn't please you. I am old enough to hear reason as well as
to talk reason. Let us go back to a point on which I wished to fix
your attention, but from which we digressed. In trying to correct
Mary's habit of rummaging in your work-basket, you boxed her ears,
and stormed at her in a most unmotherly way. Did it do any good? No;
for in ten minutes she was at the same work again. For this I talked
to her kindly, and endeavoured to make her sensible that it was
wrong to disturb your basket."

"And much good it will do!" Mrs. Elder did not feel very amiable.

"We shall see," said Uncle William, in his calm way. "Now I propose
that we both go out of this room, and let Mary come into it, and be
here alone for half an hour. My word for it, she doesn't touch your
work-basket."

"And my word for it, she goes to it the first thing."

"Notwithstanding you boxed her ears for the same fault so recently?"

"Yes, and notwithstanding you reasoned with her, and talked to her
so softly but a few moments since."

"Very well. The experiment is worth making, not to see who is right,
but to see if a gentler mode of government than the one you have
adopted will not be much better for your children. I am sure that it
will."

As proposed, the mother and Uncle William left the room, and Mary