He exclaimed, as he entered, “I’ll tell you right away what happened, mother, so that you won’t think it was still worse.  I have only whipped them both as they deserved, that is all.”

“But, Bruno, that is bad enough.  You seem to get more savage all the time,” the mother lamented.  “How could you do such a thing?”

“I’ll explain it right away and then you will have to admit that it was the only thing to do,” Bruno assured her.  “The two told me last Saturday that they had a scheme for to-day in which I was to join.  They had discovered that the lovely plums in the Rector’s garden were ripe and they meant to steal them.  When the Rector is through with his lessons at twelve o’clock he always goes to the front room and then nobody knew what is going on in the garden.  Their plan was to use this time to-day in order to shake the tree and fill their pockets full of plums.  I was to help them.  I told them what a disgrace it was for them to ask me and I said that I would find means to prevent it.  So they noisily called me a traitor and told me that accusing them was worse than stealing plums.  I said that it wasn’t my intention to tell on them, but I would come and use my whip as soon as they touched the tree.  So they laughed and sneered at me and said that they were neither afraid of me nor of my whip.  As soon as our lessons were done at twelve o’clock, they ran to the garden and, getting the whip I had hidden in the hallway, I ran after them.  Edwin was already half way up the tree and Eugene was just beginning to climb it.  First I only threatened and tried in that way to force Edwin down and keep Eugene from going further.  But they kept on sneering at me till Edwin had reached the first branch and was shaking it so hard that the lovely plums came spattering to the ground.  I got so furious at that that I began to beat first the boy higher up and then the lower one.  First, Edwin tumbled down on top of Eugene and then they both ran away moaning, while I kept on striking them.  They left the plums on the ground and I followed them.”

“It is terrible, Bruno, that such scenes have to come up between you all the time,” the mother lamented.  “You are always the one who gets wild and loses control.  It is hard to excuse that, even if your intention is good, Bruno.  I wish I could keep you boys apart.”

“It was a good thing he became furious at them to-day, mother,” Kurt remarked.  “You see it shows that even two can’t get the better of him.  If he had not been so mad, the two would have been stronger, and our poor Rector would have lost his plums.”

It was hard to tell if this explanation comforted the mother.  She had gone out with a sign to attend to Bruno’s belated lunch.  The time was already near at hand when all the children had to get back to school.

When that same evening the little ones were happily playing and the big children were busy with their school work, Kurt stole up to his mother’s chair and asked her in a low voice, “Shall we have the story to-day?”