"There's splendid jam here," I said, and invited the sufferer to dip his finger into the bowl. He did so, and stopped crying. He was quite consoled, and nearly emptied the bowl in the avidity of his appreciation. Then I gave him the coppers, and told him the name of the shop where he could get lots of the nicest crab-apples. The hall-door was still open, and the parlour was empty when I carried back the bowl. I left it on the table, and went out into the garden to talk to Dennis. I had no idea of having done wrong. At nurse's I was free to take what I liked, and I was not at all familiar with the sin of stealing. Judge, then, my surprise when cook came out for me with a flaming face, and assured me I "would catch it." I stopped playing, and felt chill with apprehension. What was going to happen to me now? Grandpapa was not there to protect me, and I had not much faith in Dennis's power to save me. Cook dragged me up-stairs, scolding me all the way. She called me a thief, a robber, and said I was worse than the dreadful highwaymen they wrote of in books. I whimperingly protested. I was not a thief, I cried indignantly; I was not a robber. I did not know what a highwayman was, but I was sure I was not that either. "Ah! you'll catch it," was all cook deigned to reply. How grossly and wickedly mismanaged children are by people who do not think or stop to study them! So many tears and tremors and moments of black despair, because angry and impatient persons will not take the trouble to use the right words and correct with justice and sense. To abuse an ignorant little child in disproportionate language, at an age when imagination exaggerates and magnifies everything, for an impulsive action and an inconsequent error, and tell her "she would catch it," is surely a hideous perversion of strength and power. Relatively speaking, that moment was not less vivid and awful for me than the worst hour of a heretic in the days of the Inquisition. And I had as little faith in the justice or kindness of my judges as any wretch of those times. My grandmother sat in bed with her glass of egg-flip in her hand, presiding relentlessly over my castigation. Again I was informed that my crime was an appalling one. I had robbed money and robbed jam. There was no softening of my grandmother's face when I said, through my sobs of terror, that I only took the money to give it to a little boy that had hurt his foot and was crying. Cook administered an unmerciful whipping, as if there were not beatings enough for me without cause down in the big town house I hated. No, verily; there are times, when I look at happier children to-day and remember that poor unhappy little child of years ago, I feel there are wrongs we cannot be expected to forgive, scars no time can efface, blunders no after good will ever rectify. I could weep to-day as bitterly for that little child, so alone, so throbbing with untamed fears, as ever she wept for herself then. Chapter VIII.