I have often told my son that he must begin by finding me a wife to
become his mother who shall satisfy both himself and me. But this is
only one of the many rocks on which we have hitherto split. We should
never have got on together; I should have had to cut him off with a
shilling either for laughing at Homer, or for refusing to laugh at him,
or both, or neither, but still cut him off. So I settled the matter long
ago by turning a deaf ear to his importunities and sticking to it that I
would not get him at all. Yet his thin ghost visits me at times and,
though he knows that it is no use pestering me further, he looks at me so
wistfully and reproachfully that I am half-inclined to turn tall, take my
chance about his mother and ask him to let me get him after all. But I
should show a clean pair of heels if he said “Yes.”
Besides, he would probably be a girl.