Mr. Fayerweather, with difficulty restraining his indignation, left the room quietly by another door, which opened at the foot of the stairs, up which he went. He descended quickly, bringing a silk gown of his wife’s on his arm, and a lace cap in his hand, and softly approached George, who was still absorbed in the contemplation of his own image. Seizing the boy, who, paralyzed with shame, could make no resistance, he stripped off his upper garment, and put the gown and cap on him; then taking him on his knee, he began to trot and dandle him, singing, “High diddle diddle.” George’s rage obtained the mastery; he struggled and kicked with the strength of a half-grown Hercules, and at length freeing himself from his father, he stripped off the gown and stamped upon it—madam’s very blue-watered tabby! then catching a glance at himself in the glass, and seeing the cap on his head, he tore it in two, and flying up to the glass, with one blow of his fist, broke it into a thousand pieces. The tempest now subsided in a torrent of tears, and the poor boy ran off to hide his shame. His father, when he saw the result of his experiment, almost repented having carried it so far. He did not think of the value of the glass, though he had sent “_home_” for it, at the cost of fifty guineas; and in its elaborately carved and gilded frame, it was the pride of all “Paved street”; nor madam’s blue-watered tabby, though it was her fourth best—indeed, she rather preferred it to her Pompadour lustring, having an idea that Mr. Fayerweather thought it becoming to her complexion—the value of these twice-told he would have thought well-bestowed if they cured George of his girlish vanity, and called forth in him a manly spirit; but he regretted having outraged the feelings of his son. He, however, courageously repressed the yearning which he felt to go and soothe the boy and do away the effect of his severe lesson by sweetmeats and caresses. He very sensibly left George to himself for a while. Madam was out at this juncture. I pass over her lamentations, on her return, at the injury done to her favorite gown and cap, and the still louder ones which escaped her at the sight of the broken looking-glass; suffice it to say, that Mr. Fayerweather promised her a green damask to replace her outraged tabby, and to send home for a pair of glasses by the next vessel. George did not make his appearance at dinner, but his father manfully resisted his inclination to seek for him, and succeeded in keeping down madam’s hysterics, by diverting her mind with some news which he told her relating to the king and queen. He did not, however, prevent her from heaping up a plate with every dainty the house afforded, and giving it to Scipio, with a charge “not to leave till he had found the child, and made him eat his dinner.”