screaming, stamping, sobbing, and knocking down chairs, were quite
powerless as methods of enforcing his liberation, he suddenly suspended
his proceedings; looked all round the room; observed the cock which
supplied his father's bath with water; and instantly resolved to flood
the house. He had set the water going in the bath, had filled it to the
brim, and was anxiously waiting, perched up on a chair, to see it
overflow--when his mother unlocked the dressing-room door, and entered
the room.

"Oh, you naughty, wicked, shocking child!" cried Mrs. Thorpe, horrified
at what she beheld, but instantly stopping the threatened deluge from
motives of precaution connected with the drawing-room ceiling. "Oh,
Zack! Zack! what will you do next? What _would_ your papa say if he
heard of this? You wicked, wicked, wicked child, I'm ashamed to look at
you!"

And, in very truth, Zack offered at that moment a sufficiently
disheartening spectacle for a mother's eyes to dwell on. There stood
the young imp, sturdy and upright in his chair, wriggling his shoulders
in and out of his frock, and holding his hands behind him in
unconscious imitation of the favorite action of Napoleon the Great. His
light hair was all rumpled down over his forehead; his lips were
swelled; his nose was red; and from his bright blue eyes Rebellion
looked out frankly mischievous, amid a surrounding halo of dirt and
tears, rubbed circular by his knuckles. After gazing on her son in mute
despair for a minute or so, Mrs. Thorpe took the only course that was
immediately open to her--or, in other words, took the child off the
chair.

"Have you learnt your lesson, you wicked boy?" she asked.