Annie caught sight of his mortified countenance, the expression of
which, though she had not heard his doom, so filled her with concern
and indignation, that--her eyes and thoughts fixed upon him, at the
other end of the class--she did not know when her turn came, but
allowed the master to stand before her in bootless expectation. He did
not interrupt her, but with a refinement of cruelty that ought to have
done him credit in his own eyes, waited till the universal silence had
at length aroused Annie to self-consciousness and a sense of
annihilating confusion. Then, with a smile on his thin lips, but a
lowering thunder-cloud on his brow, he repeated the question:
"What doth every sin deserve?"
Annie, bewildered, and burning with shame at finding herself the core
of the silence--feeling is if her poor little spirit stood there naked
to the scoffs and jeers around--could not recall a word of the answer
given in the Catechism. So, in her bewilderment, she fell back on her
common sense and experience, which, she ought to have known, had
nothing to do with the matter in hand.
"What doth every sin deserve?" again repeated the tyrant.
"A lickin'," whimpered Annie, and burst into tears.
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