His father quickly lowered his paper and raised his voice:
"I have never said that you must use everything all at once, my son. You must learn to use it at the right time."
"When is the right time to use a thing?" asked Webster, eating quietly on.
"I'll answer that question when it is necessary," his father replied grumblingly from behind his paper, putting an end to the disturbance.
A few weeks prior to this breakfast-scene Webster one day at recess had laid bare a trouble in himself, confiding it to one of his intimate school-mates. He did so with a tone of uncertainty, for he was not sure but he was not being disloyal.
"Can your father answer all the questions you ask him?"
"Not half of them!" exclaimed the comrade with splendid candour—"Not half!"
"My father answers very few I ask him," interposed a fragile little white-faced fellow who had strolled up in time to catch the drift of the confidential talk. He did not appear strong enough even to put a question: he nursed a ragged ball, had lost a front tooth, and gave off the general skim-milk look which some children carry about with them.
Webster, without inquiring further, began to feel a new respect for himself as not being worse off than other boys as to fathers; also a new respect for his father as not being worse than his class: fathers were deficient!