Tabitha's heart stood still. The day of the licking had come at last! He looked around for a stick, but the woodbox contained nothing but heavy billets, and her sentence might have been suspended had his eyes not rested upon his house slippers still lying in the middle of the floor where he had thrown them upon discovering that fussy Aunt Maria had packed them among his belongings for his journey to the east. Grabbing one of these, he struck the trembling girl half a dozen light blows across the shoulders, and then dropped it, ashamed of himself and startled at the frightened, pleading look in the black eyes raised to his in mute appeal. As the first blow descended, the terror in the thin face gave way to anger, intense, unreasoning; but she stood like a statue, silent and dry-eyed, until the slipper fell from her father's hands and he pushed her from him, saying sternly, "What have you to say for yourself?" She wheeled and looked at him with scornful eyes; then without a word of reply, gathered up both slippers from the floor, walked deliberately to the stove and threw them into the bed of live coals before either father or aunt could prevent. "There, Lynne Maximilian Catt!" she exclaimed in a voice tense with passion, "you will never use that pair to larrup me with again." He looked at her in silent amazement, and the rage died in his heart. She was the image of him. How could he blame her for displaying the passions that he himself had not learned to control? He turned back to his satchel on the floor and she, surprised that no further punishment followed her open rebellion, rushed away to her room, dribbling taffy as she ran. "Oh, dear, Mrs. Vane's rule doesn't work at all," she moaned, nursing her blistered fingers and smarting foot, heedless of the molasses trickling down the front of her dress. "I never remember to count ten, and I suppose if I did get that far, I would let the hateful words fly after them. It is just like me. That is what comes of being a Catt! If I only had a different name maybe it would be easier; but with a whole cat name, how is anyone going to keep from scratching?" The hot tears came, and for a long time she lay sobbing into the fat pillow which had seen so many floods of this kind that it had grown very much accustomed to it.