asked Mr. Pedagog. "I thought there were only two – "
"Certainly," said the Idiot. "Tommy and Mollie, but there is Mary, your old housemaid. We can't very well ask them to dine with us, you know."
"I don't see why Tommy and Mollie can't be invited," said Mr. Pedagog, much to the Idiot's surprise, it seemed so like a violation of his system, as it might be presumed to be.
"You believe in having children at table, then, Mr. Pedagog?" asked Mrs. Idiot.
"Most certainly," said the Schoolmaster. Mrs. Pedagog glanced smilingly at Mrs. Idiot, as much as to say, "Oh, these men!"
"I certainly do approve of having children at table on all occasions," he continued. "How else are they to learn how to conduct themselves? The discipline of the nursery is apt to be lax, and it is my belief that many of the bad table manners of the present-day child are due to the sense of freedom which eating dinner in the nursery naturally inculcates."
"There is something in what you say," said the Idiot. "Tommy, for instance, never learned to throw a French pancake across the table at his sister by watching his mother and myself here in the dining-room, yet in the freedom of the nursery I have known it done."
"Precisely," said Mr. Pedagog. "That very little incident illustrates my point exactly. And I have no doubt that in the nursery the offence seemed less heinous than it would had it occurred in the dining-room, and hence did not meet with the full measure of punishment that it deserved."
"I have forgotten exactly what was done on that occasion," said the Idiot, calmly. "It is my impression that I compelled Thomas to eat the pancake."
"I am sure I never heard of the incident before," said Mrs. Idiot, her cheeks growing very red. "He didn't really, did he, dear?"
"By jove!" cried the Idiot, snapping his forefinger against his thumb, "what a traitor I am, to be sure. I promised Thomas never to tell, and here I've given the poor little chap away; but the boy was excusable, I assure you all – that is, he was excusable in a sense. Mollie had previously hit him in the eye with a salted almond, and – "
"It is quite evident," put in Mrs. Pedagog, her womanly sympathy leading her to rush to the aid of Mrs. Idiot, who seemed somewhat mortified over the Idiot's confidences, "that you were not at home, my dear. I have myself observed that extraordinary episodes of this nature generally happen when it is the father who is left in charge of the children."
"Quite right, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Doctor, nodding his head gravely. "I have noticed the same thing in my professional practice. As long as the mother is about discipline is maintained, but once leave the father in charge and riot is the order of the day."
"That's exactly what I was going to say," said the Idiot. "Many a time when Mrs. Idiot has gone out shopping, as she did on the day in question, and I have remained at home for a rest, I have wished before evening came that I had gone shopping and let my wife have the rest. As a matter of fact, the bringing up of children should be left to the mother – "
"Oh, but the father should have something to do with it," interrupted Mrs. Idiot. "It is too great a responsibility to place on a woman's shoulders."
"You didn't let me finish, my dear," said the Idiot, amiably. "I was going to say that the mother should bring the children up, and the father should take 'em down when they get up too high."
"My views to a dot," said Mr. Pedagog, with more enthusiasm than he had ever yet shown over the Idiot's dicta. "Just as in ordinary colonial government, the home authorities should govern, and when necessary a stronger power should intervene."
"Ideal – is it not?" laughed Mrs. Idiot, addressing Mrs. Pedagog. "The mother, Spain. The children, Cuba. Papa, the great and glorious United States!"
"Ahem! Well," said Mr. Pedagog, "I didn't mean that exactly, you know – "
"But it's what you said, John," said Mrs. Pedagog, somewhat severely.
"Well, I don't see why there can't be a division of responsibility," said the Poet, who had never married, and who knew children only as a theory. "Let the mothers look after them in the daytime, and the fathers at night."
This sally was greeted with an outburst of applause, it was so practical.
"Excuse me!" said the Idiot. "I'm not selfish, but I don't want to have charge of the children at night. Why, when Tommy was cutting his teeth I suffered agonies when night came on. I was down-town all day, and so wasn't very much bothered then, but at night it was something awful. Not only Tommy's tooth, but the fear that his mother would tread on a tack."
"That was unselfish," said Mr. Pedagog, dryly. "You weren't afraid of treading on one yourself."
"How could I?" said the Idiot. "I had all I could do trying to keep my wife from knowing that I was disturbed. It is bad enough to be worried over a crying babe, without being bothered by an irritated husband, so I simply lay there pretending to be asleep and snoring away for dear life."
"You are the most considerate man I ever heard of," said Mrs. Pedagog, smiling broadly.
"You don't mean to say," said the Poet, with a frown, "that you made your wife get up and take all the trouble and bother – "
"I'd only have been in the way," said the Idiot, meekly.
"So he kept quiet and pretended to snore like the good old Idiot that he is," put in the Doctor. "And he did the right thing, too," he added. "If all fathers would obliterate themselves on occasions of that sort, and let the mothers rule, the Tommys and Dickies and Harrys would go to sleep a great deal more quickly."
"We are rambling," said Mr. Pedagog. "The question of a father's duty towards a teething son has nothing to do with the question of a child's right to dine with his parents."
"Oh, I don't know," said the Idiot. "If we are to consider this matter scientifically we must start right. Teething is a natural first step, for if a child hath no teeth, wherewithal shall he eat dinners with his parents or without them?"
"That is all very well," retorted Mr. Pedagog, "but to discuss fire-engines intelligently it is not necessary to go back to the times of Elisha to begin it."
Mr. Whitechoker – now the Rev. Theophilus Whitechoker, D.D., for he, too, had prospered – smiled deprecatingly. There is no man in the world who more thoroughly appreciates a biblical joke than the prosperous clergyman.
"Well," said the Idiot, reflectively, "I quite agree with your proposition that children should dine in the dining-room with their parents and not up-stairs in the nursery, with a lot of tin soldiers and golliwogs. The manners of parents are no better than those of tin soldiers and golliwogs, but their conversation is apt to prove more instructive; and as for the stern father who says his children must dine in the kitchen until they learn better manners, I never had much confidence in him or in his manners, either."
"I don't see," said the genial old gentleman who occasionally imbibed, "how you can discipline children in the nursery. If they misbehave in the dining-room you can send them up-stairs to the nursery, but if they misbehave in the nursery, where the deuce can you send them?"
"To bed," said Mr. Brief.
"Never!" cried the Idiot. "Children, Mr. Brief, as I understand them – and I have known three very well; myself as a boy, and Tommy and Mollie – children, as I understand them, are never naughty for the mere fun of being so. Their wickedness grows out of their wonderful stores of unexpended and unexpendable
