“You force me to say something that may hurt your feelings; but I believe you have forgotten it. You complain of Laura’s athletics and gymnasium work. Don’t you see that it is an escape valve for the overflow of animal spirits that the girls of our generation, Mother, missed?”
“I deny that the girls of my day possessed such ‘animal spirits,’ as you call them,” declared Mrs. Belding, vehemently.
“You force me,” said Mr. Belding, gravely, yet with a twinkle in his eyes, “to prove my case. Children! did I ever tell you about the first view I had of your dear mother?”
“No, Pop! Tell us,” urged Chet, who kept on eating despite his interest in the discussion.
“Mr. Belding!” gasped his wife, suddenly. “What are you——”
“Sorry, my dear; you force me to it,” said her husband, with continued gravity. “But the first sight I ever had of your mother, children, was when she was six or seven years old. I was working for old Mr. Cummings, whose business I finally bought out, and I came to your mother’s house on an errand.”
“James!” cried Mrs. Belding. “I cannot allow you to tell that foolish thing. It—it is disgraceful.”
“It is indeed,” admitted her husband, nodding. “But if you and your school girl friends had been as much devoted to athletics as Laura and her little friends, I doubt if you would have needed the front stairs bannisters as an escape valve for your animal spirits.
“For, children,” added Mr. Belding, as his wife, her face very rosy, got up to come around the table to him, “my first view of your mother was her coming down stairs at express train speed, a-straddle of the bannisters!”
Mrs. Belding reached him then, and any further particulars of this “disgraceful” story, were smothered promptly. But Laura and Chet enjoyed immensely the fact that—once upon a time, at least—there had been some little element of tomboyishness in their mother’s character.