Your ShelfYour Projects

Scolding a Daughter

3%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 3, 1907

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 84, No. 40.

Read the full edition

Scolding a Daughter

By Helen M. Richardson

“What will your mother say when she sees you, Louise?”
“It is not what she will say which troubles me most,” was the frank rejoinder as the girl glanced down at the pretty white dress, so fresh and dainty only an hour ago, but now limp and bedraggled from the shower which had been threatening ever since morning, and had at last caught both the girls half a mile from home.
Marjory Evans looked at her friend with some curiosity. Louise was wont to make queer remarks occasionally, but this struck her as being rather more peculiar than usual.
“My mother never nags,” Louise went on to say. “If I have done anything contrary to her wishes, she never says, ‘I told you so,’ or, ‘It serves you right,’ or any of those hateful reminders that make one feel as if one didn’t care, and often goad one on to saying so.”
“You don’t mean to say, Louise Moore, that your mother will not scold you when she sees that rain-soaked dress? I heard her advise you twice to take an umbrella. Why, my mother would talk about it for a week,” exclaimed Marjory, looking at her friend with astonishment.
“There is a difference in mothers,” was the quiet reply. “Mine believes in making me ‘work out my own salvation,’ as she calls it, from the wholesome lesson I have learned. Do you think I shall be likely to wear a clean white dress again when it looks showery, without taking an umbrella?” Louise turned her face toward Marjory as she spoke, and shook out the limp folds of her skirt, smiling ruefully.
“I think I see what you mean,” replied Marjory, critically. “Your mother prefers to have you do the scolding instead of her—silent scolding, of course. Come to think of it, it is more satisfactory to them. It saves lots of hard feelings, too. I wish my mother was that kind of woman.”
The girls had by this time reached the home of Louise; and Marjory was very willing to stop and dry her wet skirts, after being assured that Louise was in no danger of a reprimand. Besides, she was anxious to see a mother who could so control her desire to bring the full force of her indiscretion home to the mind of her daughter as to view the ruined daintiness of her attire without a word of blame.
As Louise stepped inside the door, her mother’s eyes rested for a moment upon her clinging drapery, and then she quietly suggested that it would be wise for her to change her clothes as soon as possible.
“I have laid out some dry clothing upon your bed,” she said, cheerfully assisting Louise to remove her hat.
Meanwhile Marjory had been given a seat beside the kitchen stove, with instructions to dry her wet feet until the shower should have passed over. Mrs. Moore talked to her pleasantly and cheerfully, without any embarrassing allusions to the unfortunate situation.
When Louise entered the room, a few minutes later, in clean, dry clothing, Marjory was puzzled by the expression upon her usually happy countenance. It was the grieved look of a child who has disobeyed and seeks forgiveness.
“I don’t believe I should like that if my mother were to receive me as cordially as Mrs. Moore has welcomed Louise, after I had got caught in a soaking rain, dressed out in finery which I had been advised not to wear, into the bargain. I guess Louise is right; mothers are not all alike,” her thoughts ran on.
Her surprise was greater, however, when Louise went up to her mother and wound an arm around her neck, saying, “It wasn’t your fault that I got wet, was it, Mumsie, dear?”
“No, daughter, our mistakes are generally our own fault; that is what makes their consequences often so hard to bear,” was the loving response as Mrs. Moore drew the encircling arm closer.
“She didn’t even reprove Louise, mama,” declared Marjory, an hour later, when she was relating the circumstance to her mother, after she had listened to the usual flow of words regarding her own carelessness.
“She must be a very indifferent mother,” was the disapproving answer. “If I were to adopt the same course with you, land knows what you would come to.”
Yet as Mrs. Evans noted the rebellious look which instantly settled upon her daughter’s face, she almost regretted that she had allowed her thoughts thus to express themselves.
“I’ve a mind to try Mrs. Moore’s plan sometime and see how it works. Marjory always was a child of strange ideas, and this strikes me as being about visionary enough to take her fancy,” Mrs. Evans reasoned with herself, as Marjory passed out of the room, the cloud still upon her brow.
Several days went by before Mrs. Evans had a chance to try her experiment. Marjory came home from school one afternoon with a long rent across the front of her dress—her best dress, too. Marjory had been set upon wearing it, as there were to be exercises of a patriotic nature at school that afternoon, and all the girls were going to “dress up,” she said. “I’ll be very careful of it, mama,” Marjory had urged. And her mother, remembering her resolve, had made no further opposition.
The clock upon the mantel ticked loudly, but its strokes could not deaden the steady thump, thump, thump of Marjory’s heart, as she stood waiting, with an expression of stoical indifference upon her face, for the tirade which she had every reason to expect would follow the first glance of her mother’s eye at the unsightly rent.
But as the moments passed, and her mother still continued to sew on, steadily, rapidly, and silently, she began to think that she might not have noticed her dress. Wishing to have the scolding over with as soon as possible, and unable longer to endure the painful silence, Marjory suddenly stepped up in front of her mother, and said, with an air of defiance: “I caught my dress on one of the desks and tore it, mama. What are you going to do to me?”
Mrs. Evans had been bracing herself for the moment which she, too, had been dreading. She had been so used to expressing herself in sharp, reproachful language, that it was with a great effort she forced herself to say quietly, as she viewed the ugly rent: “I don’t see that I can do anything except to mend it; but I am afraid I can not do it very neatly.”
A wave of color surged over Marjory’s expressive face as she impulsively burst forth: “You can’t tell how sorry I am, mama! I expected you would scold me, and I wasn’t going to care, but now—now—mama, I am sorrier than I can tell. I am ever so much sorrier than if you had scolded me.”
Marjory threw her arms around her mother and cried aloud.
“Is it possible that I have been the cause of all Marjory’s petulance and ill temper?” thought Mrs. Evans, as she gathered the sobbing girl into her arms and pressed kiss after kiss upon her tear-stained cheek.
“Mother has been all wrong, dear, but she has learned a lesson, and you have been her teacher,” she said, in an unsteady voice.
“What have I taught you, mama?” asked Marjory, lifting her head from her mother’s shoulder, with a puzzled expression upon her face.
“Patience and self-control, dear—two virtues which it is very difficult to acquire,” was the mother’s humble answer.—Helen M. Richardson, in The Congregationalist.