There was a little family conclave at the Lawrence house a fortnight later. No deliberative meeting had been intended; quite the contrary; for Mrs. Lawrence was on that day to make her first appearance at the dinner-table in a month, and Mrs. Burton and her husband were invited to step in informally on the occasion, and they had been glad enough to do so although the boys, who had been allowed to dine that night with the family in honor of the occasion, conversed so volubly that no other person at the table could speak without interruption.

But there came an hour when the boys could no longer prolong the usual preliminaries of going to bed, although they kissed their parents and visitors once as a matter of course, a second time to be sure they had done it, and a third time to assure themselves that they had forgotten nobody. Then several chats were interrupted by various juvenile demands, pleas and questions from the upper floor; but as, when Lawrence went in person to answer the last one he found both boys sleeping soundly the families devoted themselves to each other with the determination of passing a pleasant evening. They talked of what was going on in the world, and much that might be going on but was not, the blame being due to persons who did not think as they did; they sang, played, quoted books, talked pictures and bric-a-brac, and then Mrs. Lawrence changed the entire course of conversation by promising to replace Mrs. Burton’ chair which the dog Terry had destroyed by special arrangement with the boys.

“You sha’n’t do anything of the sort!” said Mrs. Burton. “Keep the dear little scamps from playing such pranks on any one who don’t happen to love them so well, and I’ll forgive them.”

“You don’t imagine for a moment that they knew what the result would be when they tied Terry to the chair, do you?” Mrs. Lawrence asked.

“Never!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton, emphatically, “but they did it, and it might have happened somewhere else, with people who didn’t love them so well, and what would they have thought?”

“She means that strangers would have imagined your boys a couple of little boors, Nell,” said Mr. Burton to his sister.

“Strangers know nothing whatever about other people’s children,” said Mrs. Lawrence with dignity, “and they should therefore have nothing to do with them and pass no opinions upon them. No one estimates children by what they are; they only judge by the amount of trouble they make.”

“Now you’ve done it, Mistress Alice,” said Mr. Burton to his wife. “It is better to meet a she-bear that is robbed of her whelps than a mother whose children are criticized by any one but herself.”

“I’ve done it!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton. “Who translated my quiet remark into something offensive. Besides, you’ve misapplied Scripture only to suggest things worse yet. If I’m not mistaken, the proverb about the she-bear and her whelps has something in it about a fool and his folly. Do you mean to insinuate such insulting ideas about your sister and her darlings?”

But no amount of badinage could make Mrs. Lawrence forget that some implied advice was secreted in her sister-in-law’s carefully worded remark, so she continued,

“I’m extremely sorry they had to go to you, but I couldn’t imagine what better to do. I wish Tom could have staid at home all the while to take care of them. I hope, if we ever die, they may follow us at once. Nothing is so dreadful as the idea of one’s children being perpetually misunderstood by some one else, and having their honest little hearts hardened and warped just when they should be cared for most patiently and tenderly.”

“Helen!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton, changing her seat so as to take Mrs. Lawrence’ hand, “I’d die for your children at any time, if it would do them any good.”

“I believe you, you dear girl,” said Mrs. Lawrence, recovering her natural manner, and not entirely unashamed of her outburst of feeling, “but you don’t understand it all, as you will some day. The children trouble me worse than they ever did or can any one else; but it isn’t their fault, and I know it, and can endure it. No one else can. I am sure I don’t know how to blame people who are annoyed by juvenile pranks.”

“Then what’s to be done with youngsters in general?” Mrs. Burton asked.

“They’re to be kept at home,” said Mrs. Lawrence, “under the eye of father or mother continually, until they are large enough to trust; and the age at which they’re to be trusted should not be determined by the impatience of their parents, either.”

“Don’t be frightened, Allie,” said Tom. “Helen had some of these notions before she had any boys of her own to defend.”

“They’re certainly not the result of my children’s happy experiences with the best aunt and uncle that ever lived,” said Mrs. Lawrence, caressing her adopted sister’ hand. “If you could hear the boys’s praises of you both, you’d grow insufferably vain, and imagine yourselves born to manage orphan asylums.”

“Heaven forbid!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton, the immediate result of her utterance being the partial withdrawal of Mrs. Lawrence’ hand. “There are only two children in the family——”

“Three,” corrected Mrs. Lawrence promptly.

“Oh, bless me, what have I said!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton. “Well, there are only three children in the family, and they are not enough to found an asylum, while I feel utterly unfitted to care for any one child that I don’t know very well and love very dearly.”

“Is it possible that any one can learn so much in so short a time?” exclaimed Tom Lawrence. “Harry, my boy, you’re to be congratulated.”

“Upon having educated me?” Mrs. Burton asked.

“Upon the rare wisdom with which he selected a wife, or, the special favor he found at the court where matches are made,” Tom explained.

“Harry didn’t select me at all,” said Mrs. Burton. “Budge did it for him, so of course the match was decreed in heaven. But may I know of what my sudden acquisition of knowledge consists? If there’s anything in my experience with the boys that I am not to feel humiliated about, I should be extremely glad to know of it. I went into the valley of humiliation within an hour of their arrival, and since then I’ve scarcely been out of it.”

“If it weren’t for being suspected of throwing moral deductions at people,” Tom replied, “I would say that that same valley of humiliation is very prolific of discoveries. But, preaching aside, no one can manage children without first loving them. Even a heart full of love has to make room for a lot of sorrow over blunders and failures.”

“I’ve learned that affection is absolutely necessary,” said Mrs. Burton, “but I confess that I don’t see clearly that love requires that one should be trampled upon, wheedled, made of no account and without authority in one’s own house, submit to anything, in fact——”

“Now you’ve done it again,” whispered Mr. Burton to his wife, as Helen Lawrence’ cheek began to flush, and that maternal divinity replied:

“Does the parent of all of us resign his authority when he humors us in our childish ways because we can’t comprehend any greater ones? Every concession is followed by growth on the part of his children, if they are honest; when they are not, it seems to me that the concessions aren’t made. But my children are honest.”

Mrs. Burton’s lips were parting, seeing which her husband whispered,

“Don’t!”

There was a moment or two of silence; then Mrs. Burton asked:

“How are people to know when they’re not being imposed upon by children? You can’t apply to the funny little beings the rules that explain the ways of grown people.”

“Is it the most dreadful thing in the world to be imposed upon by a child?” asked Tom. “We never impose upon them, do we? We never give them unfair answers, arbitrary commands, unkind restrictions, simply to save ourselves a little extra labor or thought?”

“Tom!” Mrs. Burton exclaimed; “I don’t do anything of the sort, I am sure.”

“Why will you display so touchy a conscience, then?” whispered her husband. “If you continue to put up your defense the instant Tom launches a criticism, he’ll begin to suspect you of dreadful cruelty to the boys.”

“Not I,” laughed Tom.

“She had you to reform, for half a year before the boys visited her,” said Helen, “and you still live.”

“But, Tom, seriously now, you don’t mean to have me infer that children shouldn’t be made to mind, and be prevented from doing things that can bother their elders?” asked Mr. Burton.

“Certainly they should have to obey,” said Tom, “but I’d rather they wouldn’t, if at the same time they must learn, as in general they do, that obedience is imposed more for the benefit of their elders than themselves.”

“I was always taught to obey,” said Mrs. Burton, with the not unusual though always unconscious peculiarity of supposing the recital of personal experience to be a sufficient argument and precedent.

“Do you find the habit still strong in her, Harry?” asked Tom.

“Do I!” exclaimed Harry, with a mock tragic air, “’could I the horrors of my prison house unfold,’s you would see that the obedient member of the Burton family never appears in gowns.”

“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Burton. “Didn’t he promise to be mine, and shall I neglect my responsibilities? I obeyed my parents.”

“And never doubted that their orders were wise, beneficent, and necessary, of course?” asked Lawrence.

“Tom, Tom!” said Helen, warningly; “if you don’t want Alice to abuse other people’s children be careful what you say about other children’s parents. Don’t play grand inquisitor.”

“Oh, not at all,” said Tom, hastily. “But I should like to borrow woman’ curiosity for a while, and have it gratified in this particular case.”

“I don’t know that I always admitted the wisdom of my parents’s commands,” said Mrs. Burton; “but how could I? I was only a child.”

“You rendered unquestioning obedience in spirit as well as in act, when you became a young lady, then?” pursued Tom.

“No, I didn’t. There!” Mrs. Burton exclaimed; “but what return can a child make for parental care and suffering, except to at least seem to be a model of compliance with its parents’s desires?”

“Good!” exclaimed Harry. “And what can a husband, who knows that his own way is best, do to recompense wifely companionship but meekly do as his wife wants him to, no matter how incorrect her ideas?”

“He can listen to reason and not be a conceited goose,” said Mrs. Burton; “and he can refrain from impeding the flow of brotherly instruction.”

“Tom shall say whatever he likes,” said Mr. Burton.

Mrs. Lawrence’s smile showed that she would be satisfied with the result, and her husband continued:

“Children—ninety-nine one-hundredths of those I’ve seen, at least, are treated as necessary nuisances by their parents. The good fathers and mothers would be horrified to realize this truth, and when it accidentally presents itself, as it frequently does to any with heart and head, its appearance is so unpleasing and perplexing that they promptly take refuge in tradition. Weren’t they brought up in the same way? To be sure, it’s the application of the same rule that has always made the ex-slave the cruelest of overseers, and the ex-servant the worst of masters; but such comparisons are odious to one’s pride, and what chance has self-respect when pride steps down before it?”

“Poor human nature!” sighed Harry. “You’ll get to Adam’s fall pretty soon, won’t you, Tom?”

“Don’t fear,” laughed Mr. Lawrence. “It’ the falling of later people that troubles me—that, and their willingness to stay down when they’ve tumbled and the calmness with which they can lie quiet and crush poor little children who aren’t responsible for being under them. Adam knew enough to wish himself back in his honorable position, but most parents have had no lofty position to which they could look longingly back, and but few of them can remember any such place having been in the possession of any member of their respective families.”

“But what is to be done, even if any one wishes to live up to your ideal standard as a guardian of children?” Mrs. Burton asked. “Submit to any and every imposition; allow every misdeed to go unpunished; be the ruled instead of the ruler?”

“Oh, no,” said Tom, “it’s something far harder than that. It’s to live for the children instead of one’s self.”

“And have all your nice times spoiled and your plans upset?”

“Yes, unless they’re really of more value than human life and human character,” Tom replied. “You indicated the proper starting point in your last remark; if you’ll study that for yourself, you’ll learn a great deal more than I can tell you, and learn it more pleasantly too.”

“I don’t care to study,” said Mrs. Burton, “when I can get my information at second-hand.”

“Go on, Tom,” said Mr. Burton, “Continue to appear in your character of the ‘Parental EncyclopÆdist’; we’ll try to stop one ear so that what goes in at the other shall not be lost.”

“I only want to say that the plans and good times spoiled by the children are what ruin every promising generation. The child should be taught, but instead of that he is only restrained. He should be encouraged to learn the meaning and the essence of whatever of the inevitable is forced upon him from year to year; but he soon learns that children’s questions are as unwelcome as tax-collectors or lightning-rod men. It’s astonishing how few hints are necessary to give a child the habit of retiring into himself, and from there to such company as he can find to tolerate him.”

“You needn’t fear for your boys, Tom,” said Mr. Burton. “I’d pay handsomely for the discovery of a single question which they have ever wanted to ask but refrained from putting.”

“And what myriads of them they can ask—not that there’s anything wrong about it, the little darlings,” Mrs. Burton added.

“I am glad of it,” said Tom; “but I hope they’ll never again have to go to any one but their mother and me for information.”

“Tom, there you go again!” said Mrs. Burton. “Please don’t believe I ever refused them an answer or answered unkindly.”

“Certainly you haven’t,” said Tom. “Excuse a stale quotation—’the exception proves the rule.’s I’ve really been nervously anxious about the soundness of this rule, until you were brought into the family, for I never knew another exception.”

“May I humbly suggest that a certain brother-in-law existed before the boys had an Aunt Alice?” asked Mr. Burton.

“Oh, yes,” said Tom; “but he was too well rewarded, for the little he did, to be worthy of consideration.”

Mrs. Burton inclined her head in acknowledgment of her brother-in-law’s compliment, and asked:

“Do you think all children’s questions are put with any distinct intention? Don’t you imagine that they ask a great many because they don’t know what else to do, or because they want to—to——”

“To talk against time, she means, Tom,” said Mr. Burton.

“Very likely. But the answers are what are of consequence, no matter what the motive of the questions may be.”

“What an idea!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton; “really, Tom, aren’t you afraid you’re losing yourself?”

“I really hadn’t noticed it,” said Tom; “but perhaps I may be able to explain myself more clearly. You go to church?”

“Regularly—every Sunday,” responded Mrs. Burton.

“And always with the most reverent feelings, of course. You never find your mind full of idle questionings, or mere curious wondering, or even a perfect blank, or a circle upon which your thoughts chase themselves around to their starting place without aim or motive?”

“How well you know the ways of the hum-drum mind, Tom,” said Mrs. Burton. “You didn’t learn them from your personal experience, of course?”

“I wish I hadn’t! But supposing you at some few times in your life have gone into the sanctuary in such frames of mind, did you never have them changed by what you’ve heard? Did you never have the very common experience of learning that it is at these very moments of weakness, indecision, blankness, childishness, or whatever you may please to call it, the mind becomes peculiarly retentive of whatever of real value happens to strike it?”

Mrs. Burton reflected, and by silence signified her assent, but she was not fully satisfied with the explanation, for she asked,

“Do you think, then, that all the ways of children are just as they should be?—that they never ask questions from any but heaven-ordained motives?—that they are utterly devoid of petty guile?”

“They’re human, I believe,” said Mr. Lawrence, “and full of human weaknesses, but any other human beings—present company excepted, of course—should know by experience how little malice there is in the most annoying of people. Certainly children do copy the faults of their elders, and—oh, woe is me! inherit the failings of their ancestors, but it is astonishing how few they seem to have when the observer will forget himself and honestly devote himself to their good. I confess it does need the wisdom of Solomon to discover when they are honest and when they’re inclined to be tricky.”

“And can you inform us where the wisdom of Solomon is to be procured for the purpose?” asked Mrs. Burton.

“From the source at which Solomon obtained it, I suppose,” Tom replied; “from an honest, unselfish mind. But it is so much easier to trust to selfishness and its twin demon suspicion, that nothing but a pitying Providence saves most children from reform schools and penitentiaries.”

“But the superiority of adults—their right to demand implicit, unquestioning obedience——”

“Is the most vicious, debasing tyranny that the world is cursed by, “Tom exclaimed with startling emphasis.” It gave the old Romans power of life and death over their children. It cast some of the vilest blots upon the pages of Holy Writ. Nowadays it is worse, for then it worked its principal mischief upon the body, but nowadays ‘I say unto you fear not them that kill the body, but’—excuse a free rendering—fear them who cast both soul and body into hell. You’re orthodox, I believe.”

Mrs. Burton shuddered, but her belief in the rights of adults, which she had inherited from a line of ancestors reaching back to Adam or protoplasm, was more powerful than her horror, and the latter was quickly overcome by the former.

“Then adults have no rights that children are bound to respect?” she asked.

“Yes; the right of undoing the failures of their own education and doing it for the benefit of beings who are not responsible for their own existence. Can you imagine a greater crime than calling a soul into existence without its own desire and volition, and then making it your slave instead of making yourself its friend?”

“Why, Tom, you’re perfectly dreadful,” exclaimed Mrs. Burton.” One would suppose that parents were a lot of pre-ordained monsters!”

“They’re worse,” said Tom; “they’re unthinking people with a lot of self-satisfaction, and a reputation for correctness of life. Malicious people are easily caught and kept out of mischief by the law. The respectable, unintentional evil-doers are those who make most of the trouble and suffering in the world.”

“And you propose to go through life dying deaths daily for the sake of those children,” said Alice, “rather than make them what you would like them to be?”

“No,” said Tom, “I propose to live a new life daily, and learn what life should be, for the sake of making them what I would like them to be; for I don’t value them so much as conveniences and playthings, as for what they may be to themselves, and to a world that sorely needs good men.”

“And women,” added Mrs. Lawrence. “I do believe you’ve forgotten the baby, you heartless wretch!”

“I accept the amendment,” said Tom, “but the world has already more good women than it begins to appreciate.”

“Bless me! what a quantity of governing that poor sister-baby will get!” said Mrs. Burton. “But, of course, you don’t call it governing; you’ll denominate it self-immolation; you’ll lose your remaining hair, and grow ten years older in the first year of its life.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Tom, with an expression of countenance which banished the smiles occasioned by his sister-in-law’ remark.

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton; “is there any more?”

“Only this—it’s positively the last—’and, finally, we then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.’s Again I would remark, that I believe you’re orthodox?”

The Burtons looked very sober for a moment, when suddenly there came through the air the cry—

“Pa-pa!”

Tom sprang to his feet; Helen looked anxious, and the Burtons smiled quietly at each other. The cry was repeated, and louder, and as Tom opened the door a little figure in white appeared.

“I can’t get to sleep,” said Budge, shielding his eyes a moment from the light. “I ain’t seen you for so long that I’e got to sit in your lap till some sleep will come to me.”

“Come to auntie, Budge,” said Mrs. Burton. “Poor papa is real tired; you can’t imagine the terrible work he’s been at for an hour.”

“Papa says it rests him to rest me,” said Budge, clasping his father tightly.

The Burtons looked on with quiet amusement, until there arose another cry in the hall of—

“Papa! Ow! pa-pa!”

Again Tom hurried to the door, this time with Budge clinging around his neck. As the door opened, Toddie crept in on his hands and knees, exclaiming:

“De old bed wazh all empty, only ’cept me, an’ I kwawled down de stepsh ’cauzh I didn’t want to be loneshome no more. And Ize all empty too, and I wantsh somefin’ to eat.”

Helen went to the dining-room closet and brought in a piece of light cake.

“There goes all my good instructions,” groaned Mrs. Burton. “To think of the industry with which I have always labored to teach those children that it’s injurious to eat between meals, and, worse yet, to eat cake!”

“And to think of how you always ended by letting the children have their own way!” added Mr. Burton.

“Eating between meals is the least of two evils,” said Tom. “When a small boy is kept in bed with a sprained ankle, and on a short allowance of food—— Oh, dear! I see my subject nosing around again, Alice. Do you know that most of the wickednesses of children come from the lack of proper attention to their physical condition?”

“Save me! Pity me!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton. “I’m convinced already that I don’t know a single thing about children, and I’ll know still less if I take another lesson to-day.”

“Izh you takin’ lessons, Aunt Alish?” asked Toddie, who had caught a fragment of the conversation. “What book is you lynin’ fwom?”

“A primer,” replied Mrs. Burton; “the very smallest, most insignificant of A B C books.”

“Why, can’t you read?” asked Budge.

“Oh, yes,” sighed Mrs. Burton. “’But whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away.’”

“’But love never faileth,’” responded Mr. Lawrence.

“If you want to learn anythin’,” said Budge, “just you ask my papa. He’ll make you know all about it, no matter how awful stupid you are.”

“Many thanks for the advice—and the insinuations,” said Mrs. Burton. “I feel as if the latter were specially pertinent, from the daze my head is in. I never knew before how necessary it was to be nobody in order to be somebody.”

The boys took possession of their father, one on each knee, and Tom rocked with them and chatted in a low tone to them, and hummed a tune, and finally broke into a song, and as it happened to be one of the variety known as “roaring,” his brother-in-law joined him, and the air recalled old friends and old associations, and both voices grew louder, and the ladies caught the air and increased its volume with their own voices, when suddenly a very shrill thin voice was heard above their heads, and Mrs. Lawrence exclaimed:

“Sh—h—h! The baby is awake.”

Subsequent sounds indicated beyond doubt that Mrs. Lawrence was correct in her supposition, and she started instinctively for the upper floor, but found herself arrested by her husband’s arm and anxious face, while Mrs. Burton exclaimed,

“Oh, bring it down here! Please, do!”

The nurse was summoned, and soon appeared with a wee bundle of flannel, linen, pink face and fingers.

“Give her to me!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton, rising to take the baby, but the baby exclaimed “Ah!” and its mother snatched it. Then the baby did its best to hide in its mother’s bosom, and its mother did her best to help it, and by the merest chance a rosy little foot escaped from its covering, seeing which Mrs. Burton hurriedly moved her chair and covered the foot with both her hands; though it would have been equally convenient and far less laborious to have tucked the foot back among its habitual wrappings. Then the boys had to be moved nearer the baby, so that they could touch it, and try to persuade it to coo; and Harry Burton found himself sitting so far from any one else that he drew his chair closer to the group, just to be sociable; and the Lawrences grew gradually to look very happy, while the Burtons grew more and more solemn, and at last the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Burton met under the superabundant wraps of the baby, and then their eyes met, and the lady’s eyes were full of tears and her husband’s full of tenderness, and Budge, who had taken in the whole scene, broke the silence by remarking;

“Why, Aunt Alice, what are you crying for?”

Then every one looked up and looked awkward, until Mrs. Lawrence leaned over the baby and kissed her sister-in-law, noticing which the two men rose abruptly, although Tom Lawrence found occasion to indulge in the ceremony of taking Harry Burton by the hand. Then the baby yielded to her aunt’ solicitations, and changed her resting-place for a few moments, and the gentlemen were informed that if they wanted to smoke they would have to do it in the dining-room, for Mrs. Lawrence was not yet able to bear it. Then the gentlemen adjourned and stared at each other as awkwardly over their cigars as if they had never met before, and the ladies chatted as confidentially as if they were twin sisters that had never been separated, and the boys were carried back to bed, one by each gentleman, and they were re-kissed good night, and their father and uncle were departing when Toddie remarked,

“Papa, mamma hazhn’t gived our sister-baby to Aunt Alish to keep, hazh she?”

“No, old chap,” said Tom.

“I don’t want anybody to have that sister-baby but us,” said Budge; “but if anybody had to, Aunt Alice would be the person. Do you know, I believe she was prayin’ to it, she looked so funny.”

The gentlemen winked at each other, and again Tom Lawrence took the hand of his brother-in-law. Several months later, the apprehensions of the boys were quieted by the appearance of a little visitor at the Burtons’, who acted as if she had come to stay, and who in the course of years cured Mrs. Burton of every assumption of the ability of relatives to manage “Other People’s Children.”

THE END.