Grandmother took her son’s letter and put on her glasses. Grandfather pointed out the page to which he wished to draw her special attention.
“That is the part I meant,” he said and grandmother read:
“‘I have been thinking a good deal lately about Kit’s and Jane’s comradeship. Doesn’t it strike you and mother that we make too little distinction? We are anxious that the children should be congenial, and in trying to keep their tastes alike and yet have Jane gentle and ladylike, isn’t there some danger of making Kit girly-girly?
“‘After all, Kit is a boy and Jane is a girl. They will have to draw apart some day and I am wondering if the time has not come to begin. Aren’t there some nice village boys in or about Hammersmith? There used to be. Suppose you let Kit play with them a bit and rough it like other fellows do. Now that you have found Letty again and she is as nice a child as she was three years ago, she will make a nice playmate for Janey, who won’t miss Kit so much. I really think it will do them both good.’
“Exactly the opinion I had reached,” declared grandmother, dropping the letter. “We must untie the apron-strings.”
Grandfather looked puzzled for a moment over this expression, then he laughed heartily.
“That’s a very good way of putting it, my dear,” he said, “only we must not untie them all at once. Too much freedom at one time is as bad as an overdose of anything else. Besides, if we begin all at once to give Kit full swing, it will set him to thinking of his old restrictions and in his new liberty he will grow very sorry for himself and consider that he had been greatly abused.
“We must not let him think he’s been molly-coddled. We must be diplomatic. I shall tell him, in a day or two, that as long as he has got on so well with his swimming, he might as well go ahead with it. We’ll send him off with Perk, too, now and then, to show Perk that we still trust him; although I shall go along the first time or two to see how things are. I do trust Perk, my dear. He is a good lad, although like all boys, he’s fond of a lark.”
Grandmother sighed, but it was not at the thought of Jo Perkins enjoying a good time.
“Our baby Kit has gone,” she said dolefully, “and a big boy has come in his stead. I do hope Janey won’t miss him too much. She has seemed a little offended at times, when Kit goes off with Billy Carpenter, but just now her heart is so full of Mrs. Hartwell-Jones, Letty, and her dolly’s new bed, that she is happy even without Kit, bless her.”