The reason why Alice Robinson could not play was, she was being punished
for breaking her mother's blue platter. Just before supper my story
being finished I went up Guide Board hill to see how she was bearing
up and she spoke to me from her window. She said she did not mind being
punished because she hadn't been for a long time, and she hoped it would
help her with her composition. She thought it would give her thoughts,
and tomorrow's the last day for her to have any. This gave me a good
idea and I told her to call her father up and beg him to beat her
violently. It would hurt, I said, but perhaps none of the other girls
would have a punishment like that, and her composition would be all
different and splendid. I would borrow Aunt Miranda's witchhayzel and
pour it on her wounds like the Samaritan in the Bible.
I went up again after supper with Dick Carter to see how it turned out.
Alice came to the window and Dick threw up a note tied to a stick. I
had written: “_Demand your punishment to the full. be brave like
Dolores' mother in the_ Martyrs of Spain.”
She threw down an answer, and it was: “_You just be like Dolores' mother
yourself if you're so smart!_” Then she stamped away from the window and
my feelings were hurt, but Dick said perhaps she was hungry, and that
made her cross. And as Dick and I turned to go out of the yard we looked
back and I saw something I can never forget. (The Great Shock) Mrs.
Robinson was out behind the barn feeding the turkies. Mr. Robinson
came softly out of the side door in the orchard and looking everywheres
around he stepped to the wire closet and took out a saucer of cold beans
with a pickled beet on top, and a big piece of blueberry pie. Then he
crept up the back stairs and we could see Alice open her door and take
in the supper.
Oh! What will become of her composition, and how can she tell anything
of the benefercent effects of punishment, when she is locked up by
one parent, and fed by the other? I have forgiven her for the way she
snapped me up for, of course, you couldn't beg your father to beat you
when he was bringing you blueberry pie. Mrs. Robinson makes a kind that
leaks out a thick purple juice into the plate and needs a spoon and
blacks your mouth, but is heavenly.
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