It was not a cheering employ, for he had to make a playful noise. At last, with infinite craft, he devised an arrangement whereby the table could be supported as to three legs on toy bricks, leaving the fourth clear to bring down on the floor. He could work the table with one hand and hold a book with the other. This he did till an evil day when Aunty Rosa pounced upon him unawares and told him that he was "acting a lie." "If you're old enough to do that," she said--her temper was always worst after dinner--"you're old enough to be beaten." "But--I'm--I'm not a animal!" said Punch, aghast. He remembered Uncle Harry and the stick, and turned white. Aunty Rosa had hidden a light cane behind her, and Punch was beaten then and there over the shoulders. It was a revelation to him. The room door was shut, and he was left to weep himself into repentance and work out his own Gospel of Life. Aunty Rosa, he argued, had the power to beat him with many stripes. It was unjust and cruel and Mamma and Papa would never have allowed it. Unless perhaps, as Aunty Rosa seemed to imply, they had sent secret orders. In which case he was abandoned indeed. It would be discreet in the future to propitiate Aunty Rosa, but, then, again, even in matters in which he was innocent, he had been accused of wishing to "show off." He had "shown off" before visitors when he had attacked a strange gentleman--Harry's uncle, not his own--with requests for information about the Griffin and the falchion, and the precise nature of the Tilbury in which Frank Fairlegh rode--all points of paramount interest which he was bursting to understand. Clearly it would not do to pretend to care for Aunty Rosa. At this point Harry entered and stood afar off, eying Punch, a disheveled heap in the corner of the room, with disgust. "You're a liar--a young liar," said Harry, with great unction, "and you're to have tea down here because you're not fit to speak to us. And you're not to speak to Judy again till Mother gives you leave. You'll corrupt her. You're only fit to associate with the servant. Mother says so." Having reduced Punch to a second agony of tears Harry departed upstairs with the news that Punch was still rebellious. Uncle Harry sat uneasily in the dining-room. "D---- it all, Rosa," said he at last, "can't you leave the child alone? He's a good enough little chap when I meet him." "He puts on his best manners with you, Henry," said Aunty Rosa, "but I'm afraid, I'm very much afraid, that he is the Black Sheep of the family." Harry heard and stored up the name for future use. Judy cried till she was bidden to stop, her brother not being worth tears; and the evening concluded with the return of Punch to the upper regions and a private sitting at which all the blinding horrors of Hell were revealed to Punch with such store of imagery as Aunty Rosa's narrow mind possessed.