"No, they're not," said Catherine promptly. "They are bluettes. Forget-me-nots have five petals and these have only four."
"Oh!" I said; "and where did you learn that?"
"My teacher told me, and she told me——" which ran into a long lecture on botany and horticulture and forest-lore and things that made me ashamed, for, frankly, I didn't know whether the tree that shaded us was an oak or a maple. I think there should be a limit on male suffrage, and woman domination, and child education. There are some things that make the average man feel cheap, if he has pride.
But this is all about the babies, and about the House only indirectly. We love children, my wife and I, and, perhaps, we love them the more because we can send them back to where we borrowed them when they become troublesome. But the most wonderful thing about babies to me is that not so long ago we were all, you and I and your neighbor, all helpless, gooing, crowing, dimpling, fat or slim kids, bundled up in carriages and looking wonder-eyed at the great picture life unfolded before us. And these babies around us—some of these days they'll be the men and women, and some of them will borrow babies, and some will cuddle their own.
The babies, God bless 'em!—and the flowers! They are very alike.
ELEVENTH PERIOD
When the house was put in order we invited our professional associates jointly—the city editor and myself and our wives—to come out and see us. It was not a dress affair. It was a case of pajamas preferred and boiled shirts common, out under the hot sun in the flat, or lolling under the oaks in the grove, where we had hard benches to make our guests appreciate upholstery. There were fifty guests, boys and girls of all ages, and, Lord, what a time we had! Not that it beat a Hibernian picnic, because it didn't; but in the pride of your first possession, to have your daily associates come out and look you over and help you enjoy it makes owning a house really worth while.
What with getting ready and getting over it, catching up sleep and massaging aching muscles, that event stands as epochal in the history of our family. For days the wives worried each other to death about what they'd have. First, one would suggest ham sandwiches and chicken salad, and the minute they agreed on that the other would switch in soft crabs and roast beef. Whether to drink coffee, tea, or lemonade, or all three; whether to have a modest modicum of malt, whether to make a punch or just let the guests drink from the air, like trees and flowers—these were all vexing points, by no means to be settled offhand. And it was not only one night that I was aroused by dream-talk like this: