“A domesticated cat,” said Phœbe. “A civilized cat.”
“But I’ve seen a wild lioness——”
“Are we to learn how to manage our young from lions and hyenas!” cried Phœbe.
They were too good for Oswald. He saw Peter already ruined, a fat, foolish, undisciplined cub.
Dolly with sympathetic amusement watched his distress, which his living half face betrayed in the oddest contrast to his left hand calm.
Arthur had been thinking gracefully while his sisters tackled their adversary. Now he decided to sum up the discussion. His authoritative manner on these occasions was always slightly irritating to Oswald. Like so many who read only occasionally and take thought as a special exercise, Arthur had a fixed persuasion that nobody else ever read or thought at all. So that he did not so much discuss as adjudicate.
“Of course,” he said, “we have to be reasonable in these things. For men a certain artificiality is undoubtedly natural. That is, so to speak, the human paradox. But artificiality is the last resort. Instinct is our basis. For the larger part the boy has just to grow. But We watch his growth. Education is really watching—keeping the course. The human error is to do too much, to distrust instinct too much, to over-teach, over-legislate, over-manage, over-decorate——”
“No, you don’t, my gentleman,” came the voice of Mary from the shadow under the old pear tree.
“Now I wonder——” said Arthur, craning his neck to look over the rose bushes.
“Diddums then,” said Mary. “Woun’t they lettim put’tt in ’s mouf? Oooh!”