She had been personally offended--that greatest of all crimes in her eyes--and she demanded condign punishment.
Nothing short of that well-known instrument which, in compliment to Arthur's riper years, Phillis had substituted for the tied up posy of twigs chosen out of her birch broom--a little, slender yellow thing, which black children might once upon a time have played with, and the use of which towards white children inevitably teaches them a sense of burning humiliation, rising into fierce indignation and desire for revenge, not unlike the revenge of negro slaves.

And naturally; for while chastisement makes Christians, punishment only makes brutes.
Almost brutal grew the expression of Arthur's poor thin face when his aunt insisted on a flogging with the old familiar cane, and after the old custom, by Phillis's hands.
"Do it, and I'll kill Phillis!" was all he said, but he looked as if he could, and would.
And when Phillis appeared, not unready or unwilling to execute the sentence--for she had bitterly resented Arthur's secession from nursery rule--the boy clung desperately with both his arms round his step- mother's waist, and the shriek of "Mother mother!" half fury, half despair, pierced Christian's very heart.
Now Mrs.Grey had a few rather strong opinions of her own on the subject of punishment, especially corporal punishment.

She thought it degraded rather than reformed, in most cases; and wherever she herself had seen it tried, it had always signally and fatally failed.

At the utmost, the doubtfulness of the experiment was so great that she felt it ought never to be administered for any but grave moral offenses--theft, lying, or the like.

Not certainly in such a case as the present--a childish fault, perhaps only a childish folly, where no moral harm was either done or intended.
"I didn't mean it! I didn't, mother!" cried the boy, incessantly, as he clung to her for protection.