“Perhaps your father might marry again and then there would be no difficulty about your being with him all the time.”
Mrs. Morton made the suggestion gently but Ethel Blue flushed angrily at once.
“I think that’s a perfectly horrible idea, Aunt Marion. That means a stepmother for me, and I think a stepmother is detestable.”
“Have you ever known one,” inquired Mrs. Morton coolly.
“No, I never have, but I’ve read a great deal about them and they’re always cross and mean and their stepchildren hate them.”
“Don’t you suppose that a great many stepchildren work up a dislike beforehand just because they read the same kind of stories that you seem to have been reading?” asked Mrs. Morton.
Ethel Blue was a reasonable girl, and she thought this over before she answered.
“Perhaps they do,” she said, although slowly, as if she disliked to admit it.
“I have happened to know several stepmothers,” said Mrs. Morton, “and I never have known one who was not quite as kind or even kinder to her stepchildren, than to her own children. A mother feels that she can do as her judgment dictates with her own children, but with her stepchildren she weighs everything with even greater care, because she feels an added responsibility toward them.”
“But she can’t love them as she does her own children,” said Ethel Blue.