The father, alone with his offspring, was agitated too. His hands were so strong! Surely, in a better world than this, a better way could be found. How was he to know how much he ought to hurt his own child? He groaned as he picked up the boy, slipped down those absurd and shapeless breeches, and with firm hand directed toward the infirm, time-honored spot, administered chastisement. A shriek of surprise and anger, a burst of sobs, then silence. The woman at the keyhole could bear the shriek and the sobs, but not the silence. She bounded into the room, and clasped the insubordinate one to her heart. In truth, even the dog Ajax was disturbed by that homely scene of punishment; the hair on his shoulders stiffened, and he made an evil noise in the back of his throat. Of all those present, the cat Pharaoh alone remained unmoved, detached as the Pyramids themselves, in a stony indifference to human woe. Pharaoh, though in a sense connected with the origin of the trouble, washed his paws of it, and kept his calm. Silent tears ran down Samuel’s cheeks, from which, as the mother saw with terror, the dazzling rosy color had now quite faded. The Nancy in her died; only the Annunziata was left. Oh, what if, what if?—But her alarm was needless. Samuel had the proud blood of survivors in his veins. Not for nothing was he a Vermonter born. Welsh seers and Norman craftsmen and Scottish covenanters had stubbornly watched his cradle; his fair substance had come all the way to Vermont from old Rome via Bunker Hill. The father brought from the adjoining bedroom the child’s woolly nightgown, ugly and comfortable and orange-dyed. He warmed it before the blaze. As the parents undressed the culprit, they noted, with an almost guilty surprise, how much smaller he seemed now that his blue tunic was off. The father held the boy in his arms before the fire, while the mother, kneeling, wiped away the soundless tears welling continually. No word was spoken. At last the father carried the dusky orange cocoon into the bedroom, and set it in its crib, and covered it gently. The mother, worn out by the artist’s birthday, crept away to bed, leaving her husband to console himself with his violins, if he could.