I think we may readily forgive the illusion to her zeal and fondness. In
fact, she was not a wise woman, and she spoiled her children as if she had
been a rich one.

At last, when we said positively that Thucydides should come to us no
more, and then qualified the prohibition by allowing him to come every
Sunday, she answered that she never would hurt the child's feelings by
telling him not to come where his mother was; that people who did not love
her children did not love her; and that, if Hippy went, she went. We
thought it a master-stroke of firmness to rejoin that Hippolyto must go in
any event; but I am bound to own that he did not go, and that his mother
stayed, and so fed us with every cunning propitiatory dainty, that we must
have been Pagans to renew our threat. In fact, we begged Mrs. Johnson to
go into the country with us, and she, after long reluctation on Hippy's
account, consented, agreeing to send him away to friends during her
absence.

We made every preparation, and on the eve of our departure Mrs. Johnson
went into the city to engage her son's passage to Bangor, while we awaited
her return in untroubled security.

But she did not appear till midnight, and then responded with but a sad
"Well, sah!" to the cheerful "Well, Mrs. Johnson!" that greeted her.

"All right, Mrs. Johnson?"

Mrs. Johnson made a strange noise, half chuckle and half death-rattle, in
her throat. "All wrong, sah. Hippy's off again; and I've been all over the
city after him."