His mother opened her lips, stopped suddenly, said a few words, stopped again, hesitated--and then ended her first sentence of admonition in the most ridiculous manner, by snatching at the nearest towel, and bearing Zack off to the wash-hand basin.
The plain fact was, that Mrs.Thorpe was secretly vain of her child.

She had long since, poor woman, forced down the strong strait-waistcoats of prudery and restraint over every other moral weakness but this--of all vanities the most beautiful; of all human failings surely the most pure! Yes, she was proud of Zack! The dear, naughty, handsome, church-disturbing, door-kicking, house-flooding Zack! If he had been a plain-featured boy, she could have gone on more sternly with her admonition: but to look coolly on his handsome face, made ugly by dirt, tears, and rumpled hair; to speak to him in that state, while soap, water, brush and towel, were all within reach, was more than the mother (or the woman either, for that matter) had the self-denial to do! So, before it had well begun, the maternal lecture ended impotently in the wash-hand basin.
When the boy had been smartened and brushed up, Mrs.Thorpe took him on her lap; and suppressing a strong desire to kiss him on both his round, shining cheeks, said these words:-- "I want you to learn your lesson, because you will please _me_ by obeying your papa.

I have always been kind to _you,_--now I want you to be kind to _me."_ For the first time, Zack hung down his head, and seemed unprepared with an answer.

Mrs.Thorpe knew by experience what this symptom meant.

"I think you are beginning to be sorry for what you have done, and are going to be a good boy," she said.