[64]
]In another: “These beautiful buds are your priceless gift; a life is not too long to give to watching them unfold, and patiently plucking off the leaves that spoil. Infinite patience, infinite wisdom, infinite love; these are the absolutely necessary tools of the Mother-Gardener.
“Example is your greatest weapon; every child is a copyist, you are its closest model. Strip yourself of your faults if you would not see them strengthening with the strength of your child.”
Dr. Wise laughed at the books good-humouredly, and tried to soothe the agitation they had caused the poor woman. Life was far too crowded with work and care and trouble for him to study beautiful aphorisms, or make an art of bringing up these children of his.
The lads had never known him to lie or break a promise, be ungentle towards anything weak, or lack courage when occasion wanted it. But they had seen him angry scores of times, had heard him swear, had even experienced injustice from him in his swift and hurried arbitration of their quarrels.
“Don’t worry your poor little head with things like these,” he said, and tried to take the book from her. “See the little vagabonds have lots of tubbing, knock them over if they’re impudent or tell lies, and don’t let the big ones bully the little chaps. They’ll come up all right.”
But she clung to the volumes and would not give them up, though she said no more to him.
[65]
]In her earnest desire to be “an example,” she made herself absolutely—almost irritatingly unselfish. She worried the little lads to death with talk and advice and admonitions. She fell into the error of “nagging” at them where once she had shrugged her shoulders; she made them learn “Noble Truths” by heart, a new one each week, to be repeated every day. She punished them conscientiously for every fault, both of omission and commission. A vicious feeling came to Clif every time he saw the blue binding of Human Buds, and our Responsibilities in the Grafting of Them. For he recognized how much it had to do with all the worrying rules of the household.
[66]
]CHAPTER VI
‘BROWNSES’ HOUSE’
About six o’clock in the evening Clif went back again from his “sulking-place.” His heart was a tender one when the crust that gathered there was pierced, and something brought back to him the exceeding weariness of the voice that had called out of the window: “Clif,—are you there, Clif?”
“I’ll go and rock that blessed kid for an hour,” was his shamefaced thought as he went up the weed-sown path again.