This sally was greeted with an outburst of applause, it was so practical.
"Excuse me!" said the Idiot. "I'm not selfish, but I don't want to have charge of the children at night. Why, when Tommy was cutting his teeth I suffered agonies when night came on. I was down-town all day, and so wasn't very much bothered then, but at night it was something awful. Not only Tommy's tooth, but the fear that his mother would tread on a tack."
"That was unselfish," said Mr. Pedagog, dryly. "You weren't afraid of treading on one yourself."
"How could I?" said the Idiot. "I had all I could do trying to keep my wife from knowing that I was disturbed. It is bad enough to be worried over a crying babe, without being bothered by an irritated husband, so I simply lay there pretending to be asleep and snoring away for dear life."
"You are the most considerate man I ever heard of," said Mrs. Pedagog, smiling broadly.
"You don't mean to say," said the Poet, with a frown, "that you made your wife get up and take all the trouble and bother—"
"I'd only have been in the way," said the Idiot, meekly.
"So he kept quiet and pretended to snore like the good old Idiot that he is," put in the Doctor. "And he did the right thing, too," he added. "If all fathers would obliterate themselves on occasions of that sort, and let the mothers rule, the Tommys and Dickies and Harrys would go to sleep a great deal more quickly."
"We are rambling," said Mr. Pedagog. "The question of a father's duty towards a teething son has nothing to do with the question of a child's right to dine with his parents."
"Oh, I don't know," said the Idiot. "If we are to consider this matter scientifically we must start right. Teething is a natural first step, for if a child hath no teeth, wherewithal shall he eat dinners with his parents or without them?"