Part 8 (2/2)

”To have lemon pie for dessert, for Bradley's sake,” answered Thaddeus, as he locked the front door and turned off the gas.

AN OBJECT-LESSON

It was early in the autumn. Mr. and Mrs. Perkins, with their two hopefuls, had returned from a month of rest at the mountains, and the question of school for Thaddeus junior came up.

”He is nearly six years old,” said Bessie, ”and I think he is quite intelligent enough to go to school, don't you?”

”Well, if you want my honest opinion,” Thaddeus answered, ”I think he's intelligent enough to go without school for another year at least. I don't want a hot-house boy, and I have always been opposed to forcing these little minds that we are called upon by circ.u.mstances to direct. It seems to me that the thing for us to do is to hold them back, if anything. If Teddy goes to school now, he'll be ready for college when he is twelve. He'll be graduated at sixteen, and at twenty he'll be practising law. At twenty-five he'll be leader of the bar; and then--what will there be left for him to achieve at fifty? Absolutely nothing.”

Mrs. Perkins laughed. ”You have great hopes for Teddy, haven't you?”

”Certainly I have,” Thaddeus replied; ”and why shouldn't I? Doesn't he combine all my good qualities plus yours? How can he be anything else than great?”

”I am afraid there's a touch of vanity in you,” said Mrs. Perkins, with a smile. ”That remark certainly indicates it.”

”No--it's not vanity in me,” said Thaddeus. ”It's confidence in you. You've a.s.sured me so often of my perfection that I am beginning to believe in it; and as for your perfection, I've always believed in it. Hence, when I see Teddy combining your perfect qualities with my own, I regard him as a supernaturally promising person--that is, I do until he begins to show the influence of contact with the hired man, and uses language which he never got from you or from me.”

”Granting that he is great at twenty-five,” said Mrs. Perkins, after a few moments' reflection, ”is that such a horrible thing?”

”It isn't for the parents of the successful youth, but for the successful youth himself it's something awful,” returned Thaddeus, with a convincing shake of the head. ”If no one ever lived beyond the age of thirty-five it wouldn't be so bad, but think of living to be even so young as sixty, with a big reputation to sustain through more than half of that period! I wouldn't want to have to sustain a big name for twenty-five years. Success entails conspicuousness, and conspicuousness makes error almost a crime. Put your mind on it for a moment. Think of Teddy here. How nervous it would make him in everything he undertook to feel that the eyes of the world were upon him. And take into consideration that other peculiarity of human nature which leads us all, you and me as well as every one else, to believe that the man who does not progress is going backward, that there is no such thing as standing still; then think of a man ill.u.s.trious enough for seventy at twenty-five--at the limit of success, with all those years before him, and no progress possible! No, my dear. Don't let's talk of school for Teddy yet.”

”I am sure I don't want to force him,” said Mrs. Perkins, ”but it sometimes seems to me that he needs lessons in discipline. I can't be following around after him all the time, and it seems to me some days that I do nothing but find fault with him. I don't want him to think I'm a stern mother; and when he tells me, as he did yesterday, that he wishes I'd take a vacation for a month, I can't blame him.”

”Did he tell you that?” asked Thaddeus, with a chuckle.

”Yes, he did,” replied Mrs. Perkins. ”I'd kept him in a chair for an hour because he would tease Tommy, and when finally I let him go I told him that he was wearing me out with his naughtiness. About an hour later he came back and said, 'You have an awful hard time bringin' me up, don't you?' I said yes, and added that he might spare me the necessity of scolding him so often, to which he replied that he'd try, but thought it would be better if I'd take a vacation for a month. He hadn't much hope for his own improvement.”

Thaddeus shook internally.

”He's perfectly wild, too, at times,” Mrs. Perkins continued. ”He wants to do such fearful things. I caught him sliding down the banisters yesterday head-foremost, and you know how he was at the Mountain House all summer long. Perfectly irrepressible.”

”That's very true,” said Thaddeus. ”I was speaking of it to the doctor up there, and asked him what he thought I'd better do.”

”And what did he say?” asked Mrs. Perkins.

”He stated his firm belief that there was nothing you or I could do to get him down to a basis, but thought Hagenbeck might accomplish something.”

”No doubt he thought that,” cried Bessie. ”No doubt everybody thought that, but it wasn't entirely Teddy's fault. If there is anything in the world that is well calculated to demoralize an active-minded, able-bodied child, it is hotel life. Teddy was egged on to all sorts of indiscretions by everybody in the hotel, from the bell-boys up. If he'd stand on his head on the cas.h.i.+er's desk, the cas.h.i.+er would laugh first, and then, to get rid of him, would suggest that he go into the dining-room and play with the headwaiter; and when he upset the contents of his bait-box in Mrs. Harkaway's lap, she interfered when I scolded him, and said she liked it. What can you do when people talk that way?”

”Get him to upset his bait-box in her lap again,” said Thaddeus. ”I think if he had been encouraged to do that as a regular thing, every morning for a week, she'd have changed her tune.”

”Well, it all goes to prove one thing,” said Mrs. Perkins, ”and that is, Teddy needs more care than we can give him personally. We are too lenient. Whenever you start in to punish him it ends up with a game; when I do it, and he says something funny, as he always does, I have to laugh.”

”How about the ounce-of-prevention idea?” suggested Thaddeus.

”We've let him go without a nurse for a year now--why can't we employ a maid to look after him--not to boss him, but to keep an eye on him--to advise him, and, in case he declines to accept the advice, to communicate with us at once? All he needs is directed occupation. As he is at present, he directs his own occupation, with the result that the things he does are of an impossible sort.”

<script>