Violet nodded assent; her heart was so full she could not have spoken a word without bursting into tears and sobs.

Mamma understood, rose and led her from the room; led her to her own dressing-room where they could be quite secure from intrusion.  Then seating herself and taking the child on her lap, “What is wrong with my dear little daughter?” she asked.

“O, mamma, mamma, I’m so sorry, so sorry!” cried the child, bursting into a passion of tears and sobs, putting her arms about her mother’s neck and hiding her face on her breast.

“Mamma is sorry, too, dear, sorry for anything that makes her Vi unhappy.  What is it? what can mother do to comfort you.”

“Mamma I don’t deserve for you to be so kind, and you’ll have to punish, ’stead of comforting.  But I just want to tell about my own self; you know I can’t tell tales, mamma.”

“No, daughter, I do not ask, or wish it; but tell me about yourself.”

“Mamma, it will make you sorry, ever so sorry.”

“Yes, dear, but I must bear it for your sake.”

“O mamma, I don’t like to make you sorry I—­I wish I hadn’t, hadn’t been naughty, oh so naughty, mamma! for I played with some of your mamma’s things that you forbade us to touch, and—­and one lovely plate got broken all up.”

“I am very sorry to hear that,” returned the mother, “yet far more grieved by my child’s sin.  But how did you get the door open and the plates off the shelf?”

“I didn’t, mamma:  they were out.”

“Some one else did it?”

“Yes, mamma; but you know I can’t tell tales.  It wasn’t any of our children, though, none of them were naughty but just me.”

“Were you playing with the plate? did you break it?”

“No mamma, I didn’t touch the plates, but I was dressing one of the dollies.  They are all locked up again now, mamma, and I don’t think anybody will touch them any more.”

A little tender, serious talk on the sin and danger of disobedience to parents, and the mother knelt with her child, and in a few simple words asked God’s forgiveness for her.  Then telling Vi she must remain alone in that room till bedtime, she left her.

Not one harsh or angry word had been spoken, and the young heart was full of a passionate love to her mother that made the thought of having grieved her a far bitterer punishment than the enforced solitude, though that was at any time irksome enough to one of Vi’s social, fun-loving temperament.

It cost the mother a pang to inflict the punishment and leave the darling alone in her trouble; but Elsie was not one to weakly yield to inclination when it came in conflict with duty.  Hers was not a selfish love; she would bear any present pain to secure the future welfare of her children.

She rejoined her friends in the drawing-room apparently as serenely happy as her wont, but through all the afternoon and evening her heart was with her little one in her banishment and grief, yearning over her with tenderest mother love.