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Read Ebook: Flaxie Growing Up Flaxie Frizzle Stories by May Sophie Tucker Elizabeth S Illustrator
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Ebook has 676 lines and 28907 words, and 14 pages
"Then she was cross."
"No, no. What did you do to her?"
"Tipped her over."
"Ethel! Ethel!"
"Ethel," said Mary in natural tones, "I'm going to be very sweet and gentle. You've been extremely to blame, but perhaps Kittyleen may forgive you if you ask her."
"H'm! Don't want her to!"
"What! Don't want her to forgive you?"
"But you were bad first, Ethel."
"H'm! If I ask her to forgive me she'll think she was good!"
Mary looked at stubborn Ethel sorrowfully. Oh, how hard it was to make children repent!
"No, you mustn't; my mamma won't allow you to shut me up, Flaxie!"
"But I'm not shutting you up; I only leave you to think."
"Don't know how to think."
"Yes, you do, Ethel, you think every time you wink."
"Well, may I wink at the clock then?" asked the child, relenting, for it was one of her delights to sit and watch the minute-hand steal slowly over the clock's white face.
"Yes, you may, if you'll keep saying over and over, while it ticks, 'I've been a naughty girl--a naughty girl; mamma'll be sorry, mamma'll be sorry.'"
"Well, I will, but hurry, Flaxie; don't be gone long."
In fifteen minutes Mary returned to find the child in the same spot; her eyes pinker than ever with weeping.
"Well, Ethel," with a grown-up folding of the hands which would have convulsed Fanny Townsend. "Well, have you been thinking, dear?"
"Yes, and I'll tell mamma about it; I shan't tell you."
"Mamma is very sick, my child."
"Then I'll tell Ninny." Ninny was the children's pet name for Julia.
"No, Ninny has a headache. I'm your mamma this afternoon. And I won't be cross to you, darling," added Mary, with humility, recalling some of her past lectures to this little sister.
"O sweetest, you make me so happy!"
"Write mamma a letter?"
The note was very short and written just as Ethel dictated it:
MY AFFECTIONATE FRIEND,--I am very sorry I knocked you down first. I will forgive you if you will forgive me.
ETHEL GRAY.
Ethel meant just this, no more, no less. She was sorry; still, if she had done wrong so had Kittyleen; if she needed forgiveness Kittyleen needed it also.
"Put it there now."
"But are you going to carry the note?"
"No, Dodo will carry it if I give her five kisses."
"Then, I'll write 'Kindness of Dora.'"
"No, no, I'm the one that's kind, not Dodo," insisted the child.
And "Kindness of Ethel" it had to be in the corner in large, plain letters.
Dora laughed when she read it, and Mary smiled indulgently.
Mary felt that on the whole her first case of discipline had resulted successfully, and was impatient for to-morrow to come, that her mother might hear of it and give her approval.
ASKING FOR "WHIZ."
NEXT day Mrs. Gray was somewhat better, and when Mary knocked softly at the chamber door, Julia replied, "Come in." The little girl had not expected to see her mother looking so pale and ill; and the tears sprang to her eyes as she leaned over the bed to give the loving kiss which she meant should fall as gently as a dewdrop on the petal of a rose. It did not seem a fitting time for the question she had come to ask about the spelling-school. Julia was brushing Mrs. Gray's hair, and Mary kissed the dark, silken locks which strayed over the pillow, murmuring, "Oh, how soft, how beautiful!"
"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Gray, with an affectionate smile, which lacked a little of its usual brightness, "how did you get on yesterday with Ethel? She is such a quiet little thing that I'm sure you had no trouble."
"No trouble!" Mary's look spoke volumes. "I suspect there's some frightful revelation coming now," said Julia. "Did you irritate her, Flaxie?" For Ethel's quietness was not always to be relied upon. She was like the still Lake Camerino of Italy, which so easily becomes muddy that the Italians have a proverb, "Do not disturb Camerino." Dr. Gray often said to Mary, when he saw her domineering over her little sister, "Be careful! Do not disturb Camerino."
"No, indeed, Ninny, I was very patient," replied Mary with pride. "But for all that I had to punish her!"
Mrs. Gray turned her head on her pillow, and looked at Mary in astonishment.
"Did you think I gave you authority to punish your little sister? That would have been strange indeed! I merely said she and Philip were to obey you during the afternoon."
Mary felt a sudden sense of humiliation, all the more as Julia had suspended the hairbrush, and was looking down on her derisively--or so she fancied.
"Why, mamma, I must have misunderstood you. I thought it was the same as if I was Julia, you know."
"Julia is eighteen years old, my child. You are twelve. But what had Ethel done that was wrong?"
Then Mary told of the quarrel with Kittyleen, and the notes which had passed between the two little girls. Though naturally given to exaggeration, she had been so carefully trained in this regard that her word could usually be taken now without "a grain of salt."
Mrs. Gray looked relieved and amused.
"So that was the way you punished your little sister? I was half afraid you had been shutting her up in the closet, or possibly snipping her fingers, either of which things, my child, I should not allow."
"No, ma'am." Mary felt like a queen dethroned.
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