Part 19 (1/2)

He was generous of his treasures and the girls never hesitated to ask him for a rose in June. Ancient Mrs. Chick, too, won an annual gift from the foreman. Down one side of his garden ranged great elder bushes, and Mrs. Chick made of the blooth in summer time, a decoction very precious for throat troubles.

Now Best stood for a moment and regarded a waste corner where grew nettles. Somebody approached him in this act of contemplation and he spoke.

”I often wonder if it would be worth while making an experiment with stinging nettles,” he said to Ernest Churchouse, who was the visitor.

”They have a spinnable fibre, John, without a doubt.”

”They have, Mister Churchouse, and they scutch well and can be wrought into textiles. But there's no temptation to make trial. I'm only thinking in a scientific spirit.”

He swept up the fallen nettles for his bonfire.

”I've come for a few b.a.l.l.s of the rough twine,” said Mr. Churchouse.

”And welcome.”

An unusual air of gloom sat on Mr. Best and the other was quick to observe it.

”All well, I hope?” he said.

”Not exactly. I'm rather under the weather; but I dare say it's my own fault.”

”It often is,” admitted Ernest; ”but in my experience that doesn't make it any better. In fact, the most disagreeable sort of depression is that which we know we are responsible for ourselves. When other people annoy us, we have the tonic effect of righteous indignation; but not when we annoy ourselves and know ourselves to blame.”

”I wouldn't go so far as to say it's all my own fault, however,”

answered Mr. Best. ”It is and it isn't my fault. To be a father of children is your own fault in a manner of speaking; and yet to be a father is not any wrong, other things being as they should.”

”On the contrary, it's part of the whole duty of man--other things being equal, as you say.”

”We look to see ourselves reflected in our offspring, yet how often do we?” asked the foreman.

”Perhaps we might oftener, if we didn't suffer from const.i.tutional inability to recognise ourselves, John. I've thought of this problem, let me tell you, for you are one of many who feel the same. So far as I can see, parents worry about what their children look like to them; but never about what they look like to their children.”

”You speak as a childless widower,” answered the other. ”Believe me, Mister Churchouse, children nowadays never hesitate to tell us what we look like to them--or what they think of us either. Even my sailor boy will do it.”

”It's the result of education,” said Ernest. ”There is no doubt that education has altered the outlook of the child on the parent. The old relation has disappeared and the fifth commandment does not make its old appeal. Children are better educated than their parents.”

”And what's the result? They'd kill the home goose that lays the golden eggs to-morrow, if they could. In fact, they're doing it. Those that remain reasonable and obedient to their fathers and mothers feel themselves martyrs. That's the best sort; but it ain't much fun having a house full of martyrs whether or no; and it ain't much fun to know that your offspring are merely enduring you, as a necessary affliction. As for the other sort, who can't stick home life and old-fas.h.i.+oned ideas, they just break loose and escape as quick as ever they know how--and no loss either.”

”A gloomy picture,” admitted Mr. Churchouse; ”but, like every other picture, it has two sides. I think time may be trusted to put it right.

After the young have left the nest, and hopped out into the world, and been sharply pecked now and again, they begin to see home in its true perspective and find that there is nothing like the affection of a mother and father.”

”They don't want anything of that,” declared John. ”If you stand for sense and experience and try to learn them, they think you're a fossil and out of sight of reality; and if you attempt to be young and interest yourself in their wretched little affairs and pay the boy with the boys and the girl with the girls, they think you're a fool.”

”No doubt they see through any effort on the part of the middle-aged to be one with them,” admitted Ernest. ”And for my part I deprecate such attempts. Let us grow old like gentlemen, John, and if they cannot perceive the rightness and stateliness of age, so much the worse for them. Some of us, however, err very gravely in this matter. There are men who have not the imagination to see themselves growing old; they only feel it. And they try to hide their feelings and think they are also hiding the fact. Such men, of course, become the laughing-stocks of the rising generation and the shame of their own.”

”All the young are alike, so I needn't grumble at my own family for that matter,” confessed Mr. Best. ”Their generation is all equally headstrong and opinionated--high and low, the same. If I've hinted to Raymond Ironsyde once, I've hinted a thousand times, that he's not going about his business in a proper spirit.”

”He is at present obviously in love, John, and must not therefore be judged. But I share your uneasiness.”

”It's wrong, and he knows it, and she ought to know it, too. Sabina, I mean. I should have given her credit for more sense myself. I thought she had plenty of self-respect and brains too.”