[Elsie at Nantucket by Martha Finley]@TWC D-Link bookElsie at Nantucket CHAPTER IX 12/22
But hard or easy, they must be answered.
Tell me the truth, would you not have been more careful to keep within prescribed bounds last night if I had been at home, or you had known that you would see me here to-day ?" "Yes, papa," she answered, in a low, unwilling tone.
"I don't think anybody else can have quite so much authority over me as you, and--and so I do, I suppose, act a little more as if I could do as I please when you are away." "And that after I have explained to you again and again that in my absence you are quite as much under the authority of the kind friends with whom I have placed you as under mine when I am with you.
I see there is no effectual way to teach you the lesson but by punishing you for disregarding it." Then he made her give him a detailed account of her ramble of the night before and its consequences. When she had gone as far in the narrative as her safe arrival among the alarmed household, he asked whether her Grandma Elsie inflicted any punishment upon her. "No, sir," answered Lulu, hanging her head and speaking in a sullen tone.
"I told her I didn't feel as if anybody had any right to punish me but you." "Lulu I did you dare to talk in that way to her ?" exclaimed the captain. "I hope she punished you for your impertinence; for if she did not I certainly must." "She lectured me then, and this morning told me my punishment was a prohibition against wandering away from the rest more than just a few yards. "But, papa, they were all so unkind to me at breakfast--I mean all but Grandma Elsie and Mamma Vi and Gracie.
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