Mrs.Fox is real good and kind; but he's just awful! I tell you, Lu, if I don't thrash him within an inch of his life when I grow to be a man, it'll be queer." "Tell me about him! what is it he does to you ?" "Well, in the first place, he pretends to be very good and pious; he preaches and prays and talks to me as if I were the greatest sinner in the world, while all the time he's ten times worse himself and the biggest kind of a hypocrite.

He tells me it's very wicked when I get angry at his hateful treatment of me, and gets as mad as a March hare himself while he's talking about it." "Well, I'd let him storm and never care a cent." "Yes, but that isn't all; he beats me dreadfully for the least little thing, and sometimes for nothing at all.

One time he bought a new padlock for the barn-door and pretty soon it disappeared.

He couldn't find it anywhere, so he called me and asked me what I had done with it.

I said I hadn't touched it, hadn't seen it, didn't even know he had bought one; and that was the truth.