“I do not,” replied Mrs. Bryce, adding, “Wally has become a passionate parent.”
“Whatever started him?”
“I did, worse luck! You know how all the useless men in the world dote on telling a woman about her duties? Now Wally’s only job is to invest money in the wrong things, but he is full of ideas about being a mother.”
There was general mirth at this point, on the part of the guests.
“I was so moved by his remarks that I dumped my cares upon him for the summer. He is outrageously superior about himself as parent. He has found the perfect governess, he discovers that our offspring has a brain; you should hear him go on.”
“I have,” protested Mrs. Page. “He used to make love to me, but now he tells me his domestic problems.”
“He has the entire house upset now, because she has run off, but when he finds her, he won’t have backbone enough to spank her,” laughed Mrs. Wally.
“It always amuses me how parents agonize over the lost child, and spank it when it’s found,” said Martin Christiansen, the guest of honour at the tea.
“Not being a parent you don’t realize that there is a large, well-defined body of parentisms. We all say the same things, do the same things to children, instinctively and without thought,” Mrs. Page assured him.