Ah," said Susan with a sigh, "those were happy old
days at Ingleside."
"Must have been," said Ken. His voice sounded queer and stiff. Rilla
supposed he was hopelessly enraged. The truth was he dared not trust his
voice lest it betray his frantic desire to laugh.
"Rilla here, now," said Susan, looking affectionately at that unhappy
damsel, "never was much spanked. She was a real well-behaved child for
the most part. But her father did spank her once. She got two bottles of
pills out of his office and dared Alice Clow to see which of them could
swallow all the pills first, and if her father had not happened in the
nick of time those two children would have been corpses by night. As it
was, they were both sick enough shortly after. But the doctor spanked
Rilla then and there and he made such a thorough job of it that she
never meddled with anything in his office afterwards. We hear a great
deal nowadays of something that is called 'moral persuasion,' but in my
opinion a good spanking and no nagging afterwards is a much better
thing."
Rilla wondered viciously whether Susan meant to relate all the family
spankings. But Susan had finished with the subject and branched off to
another cheerful one.
"I remember little Tod MacAllister over-harbour killed himself that very
way, eating up a whole box of fruitatives because he thought they were
candy. It was a very sad affair.
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