An' if you dare to give up a 'apenny to mother, I'll lick you till you're nothin' but a bag o' bones.
Understand ?' Having on the spur of the moment devised this ingenious difficulty for the child, who was sure to suffer in many ways from such a conflict of authorities, Clem began to consider how she should spend her evening.
After all, Jane was too poor-spirited a victim to afford long entertainment.

Clem would have liked dealing with some one who showed fight--some one with whom she could try savage issue in real tooth-and-claw conflict.

She had in mind a really exquisite piece of cruelty, but it was a joy necessarily postponed to a late hour of the night.

In the meantime, it would perhaps be as well to take a stroll, with a view of meeting a few friends as they came away from the work-rooms.

She was pondering the invention of some long and hard task to be executed by Jane in her absence, when a knocking at the house-door made itself heard.