"About this boy of ours, my dear," said Gerald.
"Well, what about it?" said Margaret. "He weighed fourteen pounds and an
eighth this morning, and he's only four months and ten days old, you know."
"Is he? I mean, does he? Splendid. But what I was going to say was this: in
view of the present social and economic disturbances and the price of coal
and butter--"
"He doesn't need either of those yet, dear."
"--and the price of coal and butter, it behoves us, don't you think, to
very seriously consider (yes, I meant to split it)--to very seriously
consider Nat's future?"
"Oh, I've been doing that for ever so long, Gerald. Probably in a year or
two we shan't be able to get even a general or a char, so I'm going to
teach him all sorts of household jobs--as a great treat, of course. Washing
up the plates and dishes and laying fires--oh, and darning as well. He must
certainly mend his own socks, and yours too."
"Well, perhaps, if he has time. But I have a much better proposal to make
than that. My idea is that we should bring him up to be a miner."
"I thought children under twenty-one always were."
"Not minor, silly--miner."
"Well, what's the difference? Saying it twice doesn't help. And neither
does shouting," she added.
Gerald wrote it down.
"Oh, I _see_. But why?"
"Because then he can earn enough money to keep us all comfortably--us in
idle dependence at Chelsea, him in idle independence at Merthyr-Tydfil or
wherever one mines."
"He might send us diamonds now and then too. Or perhaps it isn't allowed."
"No, no. He'll be a coal-miner, naturally."
Margaret pondered this for some minutes.
"No, I don't think much of your idea," she said finally. "Very likely coal
will have gone out of fashion by then and we shall all be warming ourselves
with Cape gooseberries or pine-kernels or something. I think he ought to be
taught _all_ kinds of mining--diamond-mining, salt-mining, gold-mining and
undermining at Lloyd's. Then be could take up whatever was most profitable
at the moment."
"He has a busy youth ahead of him, I see. Have you thought of anything
else?"
"Not at present. Don't you think, though, that this little talk of ours has
been rather instructive, Gerald? Shall we open a correspondence in _The
Literary Supplement_ on 'The Boy: What Will He Become'?"
"Not quite the sort of thing for their readers, I should say."
"But surely some of them must be quite human. It isn't as if I'd said
_Notes and Queries_. One can't imagine the readers of that ever--"
"Listen!" said Gerald. "I think I hear--"
But Margaret had vanished. Nat's already pessimistic views on his future
were being published for the benefit of the Man in the Street.