May had come again, waking the flowers with her sunny skies and balmy breath, and our friends at Pleasant Plains spent much of their time in their gardens. Delighting in each other's society they were often together, now in Mr. Keith's grounds, now in Dr. Landreth's, and anon in Wallace Ormsby's.
Mrs. Keith missed her sons, who had always relieved her of the heavy part of the work of cultivating the flowers she so loved, but their place was filled, so far as that was concerned, by a hired gardener, and she found herself better able to endure the absence of Rupert and Don out of doors than in, especially when her daughters and baby grandsons were her companions.
Mildred took great pleasure in the laying out and improvement of the comparatively extensive grounds about her new home, and husband, mother, aunt, and sisters entered heartily into her plans, helping with advice and suggestions, sometimes followed, sometimes not, but always appreciated as evidence of their affectionate interests.
As for her husband, she and all her doings were altogether perfect in his eyes. She was queen of his small realm, and could do no wrong; she excelled every other woman as wife, mother, and housekeeper; her taste was beyond criticism, and whatever she desired must be done.
He was nearly as great a paragon in her eyes, except as regarded the training of their child, to whom he would have shown unlimited indulgence, if she could have seen it without remonstrance. That she could not, knowing how ruinous it would be; but her disapproval was never manifested before Percy. She would not have him know or suspect that his parents differed in regard to his training.
And, indeed, it was only when she and Charlie were quite alone that she addressed him on the subject; never then in an unkind, fault-finding way, but with gentle persuasion and arguments drawn from observation and the teachings of Scripture.
Loving the child with an affection even deeper and tenderer than his, she was yet much more disposed to curb and restrain where she saw it to be for his good; her sense of parental responsibility was far stronger than the father's, and while he looked upon Percy as, for the present at least, scarcely more than a pretty pet and plaything, she regarded the child as a sacred trust, a little immortal whose welfare for time and eternity might depend largely upon her faithfulness in right training and teaching.
"My dear Milly, he is so young, such a mere baby," the doctor would sometimes say, "that it can't do him much harm to get his own way for a while; it will be time enough a year or two hence to begin his education."
"A very great mistake," Mildred would answer gravely; "I have had a good deal to do with young children, and am convinced that a child's education begins as soon as it knows its mother's voice and can note the changing expression of her countenance. And, Charlie, it is far easier to learn than to unlearn; if we let our child acquire bad habits at the start it will be a far more difficult task to break them up and substitute good ones, than to train him to such in the very beginning."