because there was some sense along with the impudence.

"I know that God wants you to do what I tell you, and to do it pleasantly.
Do you think the boy Jesus would have put on such a face as that--I wish I
had the little mirror to show it to you--when his mother told him it was
time to go to bed?"

And now Charlie began to look ashamed. I left the truth to work in him,
because I saw it was working. Had I not seen that, I should have compelled
him to go at once, that he might learn the majesty of law. But now that his
own better self, the self enlightened of the light that lighteneth every
man that cometh into the world, was working, time might well be afforded it
to work its perfect work. I went on talking to the others. In the space of
not more than one minute, he rose and came to me, looking both good and
ashamed, and held up his face to kiss me, saying, "Goodnight, papa." I bade
him good-night, and kissed him more tenderly than usual, that he might know
that it was all right between us. I required no formal apology, no begging
of my pardon, as some parents think right. It seemed enough to me that
his heart was turned. It is a terrible thing to run the risk of changing
humility into humiliation. Humiliation is one of the proudest conditions
in the human world. When he felt that it would be a relief to say more
explicitly, "Father, I have sinned," then let him say it; but not till
then. To compel manifestation is one surest way to check feeling.

My readers must not judge it silly to record a boy's unwillingness to go to
bed. It is precisely the same kind of disobedience that some of them are
guilty of themselves, and that in things not one whit more important than
this, only those things happen to be _their_ wish at the moment, and not
Charlie's, and so gain their superiority.