"And now the memory must be between you two always, and it isn't as it used to be in the old barbarous days. Parents nowadays care for something more than the old tyranny. We have a respect for our children as for human beings like ourselves. And now you will never be--or at least you _ought_ never to be able to look him in the face again! Just think what it means, George!" Blanche, as she stood there with disclaiming hands and eloquent voice, felt herself no mean exponent of the new order of things, and rose to the occasion. "If he had been a man, you dared not have beaten him, so it was mean, brutal, unworthy. How can you expect the child to forget it? Would you, if you were in his place? No! He will never forget it, and the memory must come between you----" "Blazeth's horry." A round, full, almost manly voice, and a round, broad face, seamed with tears, yet strangely cheerful withal, as if, the bolt having fallen, the sky was clear once more. Blanche dropped to her knees, and, secure in her own conscience, held out her arms to the little advancing figure, but the child steered past them. It was fact, and fact alone, which impressed the sturdy brain, which day by day was gathering up its store of experience against the hand-to-hand fight with life, which, please God, would come by and bye--the life which was no Kindergarten game, the life of strange, unknown dangers, against which the only weapon is the sheer steel of self-control. And this was a little foretaste of the fight in which daddy had won; daddy, who could do nothing but clasp the little figure close to his heart as it climbed to his knee, and then walk away with it to the window to hide his own tears. His wife, standing where Blasius had passed her by, could see those two round, red heads, so strangely like each other, though the one had a shock of rough hair and the other was beginning to grow bald. And she could hear that round full voice with a ring of concern in it. "Blazeth's horry he hurt daddy such a lot. And daddy hurt Blazeths awful; but he's a dood boy now. And oh, daddy! I don't fink them bickeys is half as nice as daddy's--and Blazeths would like one, becauth he's a dood boy." The storm was over. The sky was clear, and Lord George, as he carried his youngest born pick-a-back upstairs to the nursery, felt that there was a stronger tie between them than there had ever been before; a strange new tie between him and the little soul he had beckoned out of the unknown--the little soul to whom in future "Daddy says not" would represent that whole concentrated force of law and order from which it was at present sheltered, but which by and bye would be its only teacher. And yet, when brought face to face with his wife's arguments, he, being of the dumb kind, could only say: "You see, my dear, Blazes is _not_ a Kindergarten child, now is he?" CHAPTER XII. And still it rained!