“Mr. Carpenter was educating his children.”
“He’s always doing that,” said Ezra.
“Yes, but to-day there was a special lesson. He was at Union Mills yesterday, and he got a present for both of them, I mean two presents, one for Johnny and one for Nelly. You know he is always saying boys and girls would have the same tastes if they were brought up in the same way.”
“He’ll find out one day, maybe, that boys will be boys, no matter how you bring them up.”
“He has found it out already. Wait till you hear. By way of correcting any early bias, he gave a hammer and nails to Nelly and a doll to Johnny.”
“You don’t say so! What did the children do?”
“Well, they went off without a word, each carrying its toy, and Mr. Carpenter told me his ideas about education, and how well they worked. Suddenly we heard shrieks from behind the wood-pile where the children were playing. We ran out to see what was the matter. Nelly had got a handkerchief tied over the head of her hammer, and she was cuddling it to sleep in her arms. Johnny had got some of the nails and was trying to drive them into a piece of wood with the head of the doll for hammer. Nelly was screaming because he was killing poor Dolly.”
Ezra laughed, and Olive joined in at the recollection of the scene. “You cannot think how disappointed Mr. Carpenter looked. His wife said he’d got something to do if he was expecting to cure little girls of dolls in a hurry. We changed the presents and left him to reconcile it with his theories as best he could; both children were quite happy and contented afterwards.”
“Poor Carpenter! He’ll have to learn by bitter experience that he cannot change human nature all at once,” said Ezra, sympathetically. “I fear children are still in the savage stage of development, they are not communists.”
“Nobody is communist about things they care very much about,” said Olive, in desperate courage.