“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Cyril uproariously. “Well done, Sue. That’s a topper! Ha! ha!”
“My dear Cyril, what on earth is the matter?” she asked, quite bewildered.
“Nothing,” he replied gravely, as he poured himself out his usual evening drink. “My mind wanders sometimes. Go on, my dear. Evan is suffering from moral unrest, you say?”
“Yes, he used even to think it wrong sometimes when I had dear Baby in my room and played with him. I think it is dreadful not to want to see a little child happy.”
“I don’t know that I would trust you to bring up a boy, Sue,” he said candidly. “You see, your idea of a male is to let it have all it wants so long as it is only a matter of a little song and dance. But when it begins to want things a bit nearer the bone, you pull it up short and it gets confused. Very few women know how to go on as they meant to begin.”
“I suppose you mean ‘begin as they mean to go on,’” said Susie, “but you are quite wrong. Men understand what women mean quite well from the beginning.”
“I meant what I said,” Cyril persisted. “Go on as they meant to begin. They meant to begin with a carnival and to end in Lent.”
Susie flushed. “I was saying that I think Evan is far too strict with little Ivor,” she said.
“Someone has got to be sometime,” said Cyril carelessly. “It will save the schoolmaster’s arm later.”
“But a baby! It is so cruel,” she protested. “I must say, Cyril, to do you justice, you never interfered with the children.”