Poor little souls, they got their deserts with very scanty ceremony. When Biddy began to relate their crime, one glance at their fatherʼs face was enough; they hung behind, and dropped their eyes, and flushed all under their curling hair. Yet little did they guess the indignity impending. Hogstaff had followed all the way, and so had Mrs. Toaster, to plead for them. Sir Cradock sent them both away, and told Biddy to wait outside. Then he led his children to an inner room, and calmly explained his intentions. These were of such a nature that the young offenders gazed at each other in dumb amazement and horror, which very soon grew eloquent as the sentence was being executed. But the brave little fellows cried more, even then, at the indignity than the pain of it. Then the stern father ordered them out of his sight for the day, and forbade every one to speak to them until the following morning; and away the twins went, hand in hand, down the cold cruel passage, their long flaxen hair all flowing together, and shaking to the sound of their contrite sobs and heart–pangs. At the corner, by the stewardʼs room, they turned with one accord, and looked back wistfully at their father. Sir Cradock had been saying to himself, as he rubbed his hands after the exercise—“A capital dayʼs work: what a deal of good it will do them; the self–willed little rascals”! but the look cast back upon him was so like their motherʼs when he had done anything to vex her, that away he rushed to his bedroom, and had to wash his face afterwards. But, of course, he held to his stern resolve to see them no more that evening, otherwise the lesson would be utterly thrown away. Holding to it as he did, the effect surpassed all calculation. It was the turning–point in their lives. “My boy, you know it hurts me a great deal more than you”, says the hypocritical usher, who rather enjoys the cane–swing. The boy knows it is hypocrisy, and is morally hurt more than physically. But wholly different is the result when the patient knows and feels the deep love of the agent, and cannot help believing that justice has flogged the judge. And hitherto their flesh had been intemerate and inviolable; the strictest orders had been issued that none should dare to slap them, and all were only too prone to coax and pet the beautiful angels. Little angels: treated so, they would soon have been little devils. As for the warning given last week, they thought it a bit of facetiousness: so now was the time, of all times, to strike temperately, but heavily. That night they went to bed before dark, without having cared for tea or toast, and Biddyʼs soft heart ached by the pillow, as they lay in each otherʼs arms, hugged one another, having now none else in the world to love, and sobbed their little troubles off into moaning slumber.