He did not seem to mind it at all, but rather to enjoy it, as if it were a mere tossing of mental balls and catching them. But I, on the other hand, was in great bewilderment and heaviness, for I felt like being a ball myself, tossed helplessly round and round, without seeing any beginning or end to it, and it made me very unhappy. We came back to the house at supper-time with a vague sense of some judgment hanging over our heads. Aunt Dorothy met us in the porch with a switch in her hand. "Naughty children," said she, "Placidia says she heard you using profane language in the apple-tree, taking God's holy name in vain." "I was not speaking so much of God, Aunt Dorothy," said I in confusion, "as of the devil." "Worse again," said Aunt Dorothy, "that is swearing downright. It is as bad as the cavaliers at the Court. Hold out your hand, Roger; and, Olive, go to bed without supper." Roger scorned any self-defence. He held out his hand, and received three sharp switches without flinching. Only at the end he said,-- "Now I shall tell my father how Placidia stole the apples and get justice done to Olive." "You will tell your father nothing, sir," said Aunt Dorothy. "I have sent Placidia to bed three hours ago for tale-bearing, and given her the chapter in the Proverbs to learn. And you will sit down and learn the same, and both of you say it to me to-morrow morning before breakfast." This was what Aunt Dorothy considered even-handed justice. Time, she said, was too precious to spend in searching out the rights of children's quarrels, and human nature being depraved as it is, all accusations had probably some ground of truth, and all accusers some wrong motive. And in all quarrels there is always, said she, fault on both sides. She therefore punished accused and accuser alike, without further investigation. I have observed something of the same plan pursued since by some persons who aspire to the character of impartial historians. But it never struck me as quite fair in the historians or in Aunt Dorothy. However, I must say, in Aunt Dorothy's case, this mode of administering justice had a tendency to check accusations. It must have been an unusually strong desire of vengeance, or sense of wrong, which induced us to draw up an indictment which was sure to be visited with equal severity on plaintiff and defendant. And although our sense of justice was not satisfied, and Roger and I in consequence formed ourselves into a permanent Committee of Grievances, the peace of the household was perhaps on the whole promoted by the system. The embittering effects were, moreover, softened in our case by the presence of other counteracting elements. I had not been long in bed according to the decrees of Justice in the person of Aunt Dorothy, when Mercy, in the person of Aunt Gretel, came to bind up my wounds.