That look had the effect of making me feel myself to be a criminal on a large order.  Bad people went to hell, I knew, and I was bad because I never got enough sweets, never had enough desserts, hard sauce, jam, maple syrup, and so I stole them.  I was bad because I wanted my own way about everything and would fight to get it.  That was being willful.  And I would tell all the lies I needed.

 This particular spanking was the result of my stealing chocolates and lying about it.
 It happened on a Saturday.  Reese had gone on an all day boating excursion with his class.  Mamma always did her shopping right after lunch.  On this day she promised to take my sister Elma with her and drop her off at Mabel Webb's, her best friend.  They would have the afternoon together.  Bess, who was the baby, only a little more than two, was always put to bed for a long nap right after lunch.  She would be asleep before Ellen, our nurse, had shut the door.

 As I was five, I did not need to take a nap but I had to take a "rest."  This meant lying down on the couch in the nursery, although I could read.
After lunch, before Mamma had got on her things to go out, she gave us each a chocolate, delicious little oblong blocks wrapped in silver foil.
She got them out of a box she took out of her clothes closet.

Elma asked me if I would give her my silver foil because she was making a ball of it.
 Mamma was sitting down with Bess on her lap and she and Elma together were getting Bess's silver foil off and the chocolate in her mouth.

 While they were fussing with Bess I looked for the place in the closet where Mamma kept the chocolates. I wanted another chocolate.  Maybe two.   I waited until Mamma had gone, the house had quieted down and I was taking my rest on the nursery couch before going back to the closet to get the chocolates.  I looked for the box.  There it was.  I dragged the chair across the room, put it in the closet, and climbed up on it,  I took down the blue box and opened it; it was nearly full.  Tow would never be missed.

 Picking out two, I moved the others about a little, and put the box exactly where it had been.  I took the chair back to Mamma's dressing table, and then very carefully removed the silver foil wrapped around the chocolates.  That would be for Elma, for her ball of foil.  How pleased and surprised she would be..  Then I ate the chocolates slowly, and with great enjoyment.

 Afterwards I began to think about the pieces of silver foil.  It wouldn't be safe to give them to Elma.  They might give everything away.  I decided finally to keep them several days scrunched up in my flannel bag of jacks.  Then I could bring them out as if I had found them outdoors.
 

I gave  a last look around the to be sure everything was in order-nothing disarranged on Mamma's dressing table, the chair where it always was, the door to the closet closed.
When Mamma returned I was seated on the floor in the nursery doing a puzzle.  But my mother had no sooner entered her room than she called me.

 I went to her in some alarm as her voice had been sharp.  She was standing near the open door of her closet with the box of chocolates in her hand.
     "Mary, you've been at these chocolates"
     "I have not!"
     The lie was well told, not at all in a frightened voice; I was even a little indignant at the unjust accusation.
     I looked right at her, hat must have been when I squeezed the bulb and took that photograph of her face-sever, unsmiling, disapproving.  It went immediately into my mental album.
    Those were the days when spankings followed crimes as a matter of course.  When it was over and I stood sobbing, wiping my eyes and buttoning up my drawers, I could not help asking her, "But Mamma, how did you find out?"
     She pointed to the floor near her dressing table.  There lay two tiny scraps of paper that had interlined the silver foil jackets.  I had not even noticed them.
    There was nothing different about that whipping from a lot of others I had had, except that this one had been photographed, not the whipping, but Mamma's face, to show how a mother felt when she had a bad girl for a daughter.  The picture hung in my mental album, as clearly as if it hung on the wall before me. That was not the last of my spankings growing up but it was one I will always remember.