It is a further refinement when the staunch little lover of liberty sets about "easing" the pressure of commands. If, for example, he is told to keep perfectly quiet because mother or father wants to sleep, he will prettily plead for the reservation of whispering ever so softly. If he is forbidden to ask for things at the table he will resort to sly indirect reminders of what he wants, as when a boy of five and a half years whispered audibly: "I hope somebody will offer me some more soup," or when a girl of three and a half years, with more subtle insinuation, observed on seeing the elder folk eating cake: "I not asking". A like astuteness will show itself in meeting the dismal accusations and scoldings. Sometimes the fault-finding is daringly ignored, and the small culprit, after keeping up an excellent appearance of listening, proceeds in the most artless way to talk about something more agreeable, or, what is worse, to criticise the manner of his correction; as when a small boy interrupted his mother's well-prepared homily by remarking: "Mamma, when you talk you don't move your upper jaw". In cases in which no attempt is made to ignore the accusation, the small wits are wont to be busy discovering exculpations. Here we have the ruses, often crude enough, by which the little culprit tries to shake off moral responsibility, to deny the authorship of the "naughty" action. The blame is put on anybody or anything--if there is no other scape-goat in view, then on the hands or other "bodily agents". This last device is sometimes hit upon very early, as when a mite of two who was told to stop crying gasped out: "Elsie cry--_not_ Elsie cry--tears cry--naughty tears!" We find too at an early age a suggestion of fatalism, as when a boy of three who was blamed for not eating his crusts, and his procedure contrasted with that of his virtuous sire, remarked: "Yes, but, papa, you see God had made you and me different". Next to these denials of the "naughty" action come attempts at justification. Sometimes these look like pitiful examples of quibbling. A boy had been rough with his baby brother. His mother chid him, telling him he might hurt baby. He then asked his mother, "Isn't he my own brother?" and on his mother admitting so incontestable a proposition, exclaimed triumphantly, "Well, you said I could do what I liked with _my own_ things". At other times they have a dreadful look of being fibs invented for the purpose of covering a fault. Under a severe mode of discipline a child is apt, as already hinted, to slip over the boundary line of truth in his self-protective efforts to escape blame and punishment.