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“I’ll be nice to them,” said Jo, cheerfully. “I like Alice.”

Mrs. Holmes continued to smoke in silence. Biddy, watching her intently, suddenly said aggressively:

“I am going down to the shed.”

She made a movement as though to carry out her threat, but in a second Mrs. Holmes had sprung from her seat and seized her arm. The child screamed.

“You’re hurting me—let me go. You’re cross and horrid.”

“How dare you talk to me like that?”

The fury in Vera Holmes’s face was not pleasant to see.

“Yes, you are horrid. You don’t love me, and you don’t love Daddy either. It’s only Jo and Gerald you like.”

It was then like a flash that the eruption came. Vera Holmes’s face was convulsed with passion. Stooping she seized a thick hunting crop lying on the veranda and brought it down heavily across the child’s small shoulders. Biddy was screaming now at the top of her lungs.

“Let me go—beast—beast—I hate you.”

But again and again the heavy crop descended. Suddenly Vera flung it from her, and released the shrieking child.

“Go up to the schoolroom—Jo, you go too,” she said hoarsely, and pushing them both down the veranda steps, she sank back into her own chair.

Ann had risen. It had all happened so quickly that she had been powerless to interfere. In any case what could she do? She was appalled by the scene. Biddy had certainly deserved punishment, and probably she had not been so badly hurt, for her clothes had helped