'So you have been cockering your infant,' said Tom, meeting her. 'You mean to keep him a baby all his life.'
'Tom, I want to talk to you,' said she.
In expectation of her displeasure, he met it half way, setting his back against the passage wall, and dogmatically declaring, 'You'll be the ruin of him if you go on in this way! How is he ever to go through the world if you are to be always wiping his tears with an embroidered pocket-handkerchief, and cossetting him up like a blessed little sucking lamb?'
'Of course he must rough it,' said Ethel, setting her back against the opposite wall; 'I only want him to be hardened; but after a shock like this, one cannot go on as if one was a stock or stake. Even a machine would have its wheels out of order—'
'Well, well, but it is time that should be over.'
'So it is;' and as the sudden thought flashed on her, 'Tom, I want you to reconsider your journey, that you gave up in the spring, and take him—'
'I don't want to go anywhere,' he wearily said.
'Only it would be so good for him,' said Ethel earnestly; 'he really ought to see something taller than the Minster tower, and you are the only right person to take him, you are so kind to him.'
'For instance?' he said, smiling.
'Accidents will happen in the best regulated families; besides, he did want shaking up. I dare say he will be the better for it. There's the dinner-bell.'