“He is one of the ‘Boys’ Eleven,’ isn’t he?”
“Oh, yes, and is wild about it: and there, I grant you, he never forgets. It’s, ‘Mother, get cook to give us an early dinner: we must be on the field by two!’ ‘Don’t forget to have my flannels clean for Friday, will you mumsy?’ he knows when to coax. ‘Subscription is due on Thursday, mother!’ and this, every day till he gets the money.”
“I congratulate you, my dear friend, there’s nothing seriously amiss with the boy’s brain.”
“Good heavens, doctor! Whoever thought there was? You take my breath away!”
“Well, well, I didn’t mean to frighten you, but, don’t you see, it comes to this: either it’s a case of chronic disease, open only to medical treatment, if to any; or it is just a case of defective education, a piece of mischief bred of allowance which his parents cannot too soon set themselves to cure.”
Mrs. Bruce was the least in the world nettled at this serious view of the case. It was one thing for her to write down hard things of her eldest boy, the pride of her heart, but a different matter for another to take her au sérieux.
“But, my dear doctor, are you not taking a common fault of youth too seriously? It’s tiresome that he should forget so, but give him a year or two, and he will grow out of it, you’ll see. Time will steady him. It’s just the volatility of youth, and for my part I don’t like to see a boy with a man’s head on his shoulders.” The doctor resumed his drumming on the table. He had put his foot in it already, and confounded his own foolhardiness.
“Well, I daresay you are right in allowing something on the score of youthful volatility; but we old doctors, whose business it is to study the close connection between mind and matter, see our way to only one conclusion, that any failing of mind or body, left to itself, can do no other than strengthen.”
“Have another cup of tea, doctor? I am not sure that I understand. I know nothing about science. You mean that Fred will become more forgetful and less dependable the older he gets?”
“I don’t know that I should have ventured to put it so baldly, but that’s about the fact. But, of course, circumstances may give him a bent in the other direction, and Fred may develop into such a careful old sobersides that his mother will be ashamed of him.”