"I mean," he went on, warming to his subject, "that you've got to teach
a child what it means to reap what he sows. If Richard wants to put his
finger on the stove and investigate the phenomenon of calorics, let him.
He won't do it twice."
"And if he wants to paddle in the aquarium of a cold winter day,
you'd----"
"Let him--of course," said Sam stoutly. "He'd feel uncomfortably damp
and chilly after a while."
"Yes; and have the croup or pneumonia that same night."
"You're hopelessly old-fashioned, Betty," he laughed; "you shouldn't
introduce the croup or pneumonia idea into the infant consciousness.
But seriously, my dear, I believe I'm right. If you don't teach the
children to recognise the relation between cause and effect now--so that
it becomes second nature to them, how are they going to understand the
subject when they're put up against it later? You'll find the mother
bird and the mother bear, and, in fact, all the animal creation
carefully instilling the idea of cause and effect into their offspring
from the very beginning; while human parents are as constantly
protecting their children from the effects of the causes which the
children ignorantly set in motion. In other words we persist in undoing
the work of old 'Mother Be-done-by-as-you-did.' It's a blunder, in my
opinion. But of course, I'm a mere man and my ideas are not entitled to
much consideration."
Elizabeth gazed at her husband with open admiration. "Of course they are
entitled to consideration," she said decidedly. "And I believe what you
have said--with reservations. Suppose Baby Dick, for example, should
lean out of the window too far--a second-story window, I mean--and I
should see him doing it and feel pretty certain he was going to pitch
out head first and cripple himself for life. Do you think I ought to
stand still and let the law of gravitation teach him not to do it a
second time?"
Sam Brewster laid down his pipe and gazed steadfastly at his wife. She
was looking extremely young and bewitchingly pretty as she leaned toward
him, her cheeks pink, her brown eyes glowing with earnestness in which
he thought he detected a spark of her old girlish mischief.
"'And still the wonder grew,'" he quoted solemnly, "'that one small head
could carry all she knew!'"
"Please answer me, Sam," she insisted.
"Well, of course you've got me. You'd have to haul in the young person
by the heels, and----"
"And what, exactly, if you please?"
"You might illustrate--with some fragile, concrete object, like an
egg--as to what would happen if he fell out," said Sam, with exceeding
mildness, "and----"
"In other words," she interrupted him triumphantly, "I ought to
interfere _some_ of the time between cause and effect. The question
being when to interfere and when not to."
"Exactly!" he said, planting an irrelevant kiss on the pink cheek
nearest him. "And that, my dear Betty, is your job--and, of course,
mine, when I'm here. But I still hold that the natural penalty is
best--when it's convincingly painful yet entirely innocuous."
"What is the natural penalty for eating cookies out of the box when
you've been forbidden to do it?" she wanted to know.
He chuckled as certain memories of his boyhood came back to him. "My
word!" he said, "I wish I could ever taste anything half as good as the
cookies out of Aunt Julia Brewster's crock--it was a cooky-crock in
those days. Of course I was forbidden to go to it without permission,
and also of course I did it."
"What happened?" she demanded, the mischief growing bolder in her eyes.
He reflected. "Aunt Julia wouldn't let me have any at table on several
occasions; but I--er--regret to say that I was not duly impressed by the
punishment. A cooky--one cooky--decorously taken from a china plate at
the conclusion of a meal did not, in my youthful opinion, court
comparison with six--eight--ten cookies, moist and spicy from their
seclusion and eaten with an uncloyed appetite. Let's--er--change the
subject for the moment, my dear. Of course I'm right, but I appear to be
hopelessly treed. Tell me how our friend Miss Tripp is getting on. She
appeared somewhat depressed at dinner-time, and I didn't like to ask for
information for fear there was nothing doing."
Elizabeth sighed sympathetically. "Evelyn had a dreadfully disappointing
day," she told him. "But"--her eyes dancing again--"she met Mr. Hickey
down town, and he actually invited her to lunch with him."
Sam whistled softly. "Hickey is progressing," he said approvingly. "Did
he take her to the business men's lunchroom? Hickey has conscientious
scruples against going anywhere else. I asked him into Colby's one day
and he declined on the ground of his duty as a constant patron of the B.
M. L. He said his table was reserved for him there by the season,
and----"
"How absurd!" laughed Elizabeth. "But, I was going to tell you; Evelyn
remembered another engagement, and so----" she stopped short, her eyes
growing luminous. "Sam," she said suddenly, "I don't know what to think
of Evelyn; she really didn't have any lunch at all; she said so when she
came. I made her a cup of tea; she looked so worn and tired. I wonder if
Mr. Hickey could have said anything, or---- What do you think, Sam?"
Sam yawned behind his paper. "I'm really too sleepy to give to the
question the profound attention which it merits; but to-morrow when my
intellect is fresh and keen, I'll endeavour to----"
"You mean you don't care."
"Suppose I did care, my very dear Betty; suppose my whole career
depended upon what Hickey said--or didn't say; what could I do about
it?"
"I'm sure I don't know, Sam," said his Elizabeth meekly. But her eyes
were still full of speculative curiosity as she went up-stairs.