This speech only caused a smile, and yet I felt hurt and astonished
that a woman whom I had never done anything to offend should be so
gratuitously spiteful.
In the evening she sent two of her brood over to borrow my "long
iron," as she called an Italian iron. I was just getting my baby to
sleep, sitting upon a low stool by the fire. I pointed to the iron
upon the shelf, and told the girl to take it. She did so, but stood
beside me, holding it carelessly in her hand, and staring at the
baby, who had just sunk to sleep upon my lap.
The next moment the heavy iron fell from her relaxed grasp, giving
me a severe blow upon my knee and foot; and glanced so near the
child's head that it drew from me a cry of terror.
"I guess that was nigh braining the child," quoth Miss Amanda, with
the greatest coolness, and without making the least apology. Master
Ammon burst into a loud laugh. "If it had, Mandy, I guess we'd have
cotched it." Provoked at their insolence, I told them to leave the
house. The tears were in my eyes, for I felt that had they injured
the child, it would not have caused them the least regret.
The next day, as we were standing at the door, my husband was
greatly amused by seeing fat Uncle Joe chasing the rebellious Ammon
over the meadow in front of the house. Joe was out of breath,
panting and puffing like a small steam-engine, and his face flushed
to deep red with excitement and passion. "You - - young scoundrel!"
he cried, half choked with fury, "If I catch up to you, I'll take
the skin off you!"
"You - - old scoundrel, you may have my skin if you can get at me,"
retorted the precocious child, as he jumped up upon the top of the
high fence, and doubled his fist in a menacing manner at his father.
"That boy is growing too bad," said Uncle Joe, coming up to us out
of breath, the perspiration streaming down his face. "It is time to
break him in, or he'll get the master of us all."
"You should have begun that before," said Moodie. "He seems a
hopeful pupil."
"Oh, as to that, a little swearing is manly," returned the father;
"I swear myself, I know, and as the old cock crows, so crows the
young one. It is not his swearing that I care a pin for, but he will
not do a thing I tell him to."
"Swearing is a dreadful vice," said I, "and, wicked as it is in the
mouth of a grown-up person, it is perfectly shocking in a child; it
painfully tells he has been brought up without the fear of God."
"Pooh!
