“It is my turn to thank you,” I acknowledged, after giving his statement a moment or two of thought.
“But we’re getting away from the point again,” proclaimed my husband. “I’ve been trying to tell you that children are like rabbits: It’s only fit and proper they should be cared for, but they can’t thrive, and they can’t even live, if they’re handled too much.”
“I haven’t observed any alarming absence of health in my children,” I found the courage to say. But a tightness gathered about my heart, for I could sniff what was coming.
“They may be all right, as far as that goes,” persisted their lordly parent. “But what I say is, too much cuddling and mollycoddling isn’t good for that boy of yours, or anybody else’s boy.” And he proceeded to explain that my Dinkie was an ordinary, 24 every-day, normal child and should be accepted and treated as such or we’d have a temperamental little bounder on our hands.
I knew that my boy wasn’t abnormal. But I knew, on the other hand, that he was an exceptionally impressionable and sensitive child. And I couldn’t be sorry for that, for if there’s anything I abhor in this world it’s torpor. And whatever he may have been, nothing could shake me in my firm conviction that a child’s own mother is the best person to watch over his growth and shape his character.
“But what is all this leading up to?” I asked, steeling myself for the unwelcome.
“Simply to what I’ve already told you on several occasions,” was my husband’s answer. “That it’s about time this boy of ours was bundled off to a boarding-school.”
I sat back, trying to picture my home and my life without Dinkie. But it was unbearable. It was unthinkable.
“I shall never agree to that,” I quietly retorted.
“Why?” asked my husband, with a note of triumph which I resented.