“Bravo!” exclaimed Dr. Vessinger, satirically. “Young Hercules needs the chastening hand of his sire.”
“We shall have to call you in, I guess, Vessinger, if the kid’s temper gets worse. It’s too much for his mother now, and he is only afraid of me because I am home so little he doesn’t exactly realize I am his father. When he does, he will be boxing me.”
“Yes,” sighed Mrs. Simmons, red with annoyance. “It has come all of a sudden, too. He was so gentle as a baby, so sweet. I think it must be the nurse, Dora.”
The company looked sympathetic, and she continued apologetically: “She is a good woman, but she is so tactless. She doesn’t know how to manage the little fellow. She should appeal to his reason, I think.”
“It is sometimes difficult to get a quiet hearing,” observed the doctor.
“Tiresome creatures, nurses,” the Magnificent Wreck added sympathetically. “I can remember how I hated mine.”
“Can you?” the younger woman put in inadvertently, as though called upon to applaud a triumph of memory.
“But what a beautiful child!” exclaimed the Magnificent one, declining issue with the other. “So like his father, as he stood there, his head thrown back. When he whirled past us just now, there was the gleam of the Viking in his eyes!”
“Yes, all he needed was a carving-knife to be a first-class pirate,” Vessinger added lightly.
The father laughed, but not heartily; and Vessinger, feeling the topic exhausted, turned to his blonde neighbor: