"I know that," in a low and troubled tone, "but I know, too, that there is always unhappiness where one is on bad terms with one's father and mother."
"My dear girl, I can't say what bee you have got in your bonnet now, but I beg you to believe, I am perfectly happy at this present moment, in spite of this confounded chop that has been done to a chip. 'God sends meat, the devil sends cooks.' That's not a prayer, Tommy, you needn't commit it to memory."
"But there's 'God' and the 'devil' in it," says Tommy, skeptically: "that always means prayers."
"Not this time. And you can't pray to both; your mother has taught you that; you should teach her something in return. That's only fair, isn't it?"
"She knows everything," says Tommy, dejectedly. It is quite plain to his hearers that he regrets his mother's universal knowledge—that he would have dearly liked to give her a lesson or two.
"Not everything," says his father. "For example, she cannot understand that I am the happiest man in the world; she imagines I should be better off if she was somebody else's wife and somebody else's mother."
"Whose mother?" demands Tommy, his eyes growing round.
"Ah, that's just it. You must ask her. She has evidently some arrière pensée."
"Freddy," says his wife in a low tone.
"Well! What am I to think? You see," to Tommy, who is now deeply interested, "if she wasn't your mother, she'd be somebody else's."