Both boys looked up at the window. Mrs. Burton gracefully framed a well-posed picture of herself as she leaned upon the sill, and her husband hung admiringly upon her words. “Boys, come into the house, and let’s have a lovely talk about mamma.”
“Don’t want to talk about mamma,” said Toddie, a suspicion of a snarl modifying his natural tones. “Wantsh the dog.”
“But mammas and babies are so much nicer than dogs,” pleaded Mrs. Burton, after a withering glance at her husband, who had received Toddie’s remark with a titter.
“Well, I don’t think so,” said Budge, reflectively. “We can always see mamma and the baby, but Terry we can only see once in a while, and he never wants to see us, somehow.”
“My dear,” said Mr. Burton humbly, “if you care for the experience of another, my advice is that you let those boys come out of their disappointment themselves. They’ll do it in their own way in spite of you.”
“There are experiences,” remarked Mrs. Burton, with chilling dignity, “which are useful only through the realization of their worthlessness. Anyone can let children alone. Darlings, did you ever hear the story of little Patty Pout?”
“No,” growled Budge, in a manner that would have discouraged any one not conscious of having been born to rule.
“Well, Patty Pout was a nice little girl,” said Mrs. Burton, “except that she would sulk whenever things did not happen just as she wanted them to. One day she had a stick of candy, and was playing ‘lose and find’ with it; but she happened to put it away so carefully that she forgot where it was, so she sat down to sulk, and suddenly there came up a shower and melted that stick of candy, which had been just around the corner all the while.”
“Is Terry just around the corner?” asked Toddie, jumping up, while Budge suddenly scraped the dirt with the toes of his shoes and said:
“If Patty’d et up her candy while she had it, she wouldn’t have had any trouble.”