t would be well, my son, not to repeat the mistakes of your father!"
observed Dinky-Dunk. And having said it, he relighted his quarantining
pipe and refused to meet my eye. But it didn't take a surgical
operation to get what he meant into my head. It hurt, in more ways
than one, for it struck me as suspiciously like a stone embodied in a
snowball--and even our offspring recognized this as no fair manner of
fighting.

"Then it impresses you as a mistake?" I demanded, seeing red, for the
coyote in me, I'm afraid, will never entirely become house-dog.

"Isn't that the way you regard it?" he asked, inspecting me with a
non-committal eye.

I had to bite my lip, to keep from flinging out at him the things that
were huddled back in my heart. But it was no time for making big war
medicine. So I got the lid on, and held it there.

"My dear Dinky-Dunk," I said with an effort at a gesture of weariness,
"I've long since learned that life can't be made clean, like a cat's
body, by the use of the tongue alone!"

Dinky-Dunk did not look at me. Instead, he turned to the boy who was
watching that scene with a small frown of perplexity on his none too
approving face.

"You go up to the nursery," commanded my husband, with more curtness
than usual.

But before Dinkie went he slowly crossed the room and kissed me. He
did so with a quiet resoluteness which was not without its tacit touch
of challenge.

"You may feel that way about the use of the tongue," said my husband
as soon as we were alone, "but I'm going to unload a few things I've
been keeping under cover."

He waited for me to say something. But I preferred remaining silent.

"Of course," he floundered on, "I don't want to stop you martyrizing
yourself in making a mountain out of a mole-hill. But I'm getting a
trifle tired of this holier-than-thou attitude. And----"

"And?" I prompted, when he came to a stop and sat pushing up his
brindled front-hair until it made me think of the Corean lion on the
library mantel, the lion in pottery which we invariably spoke of as
the Dog of Fo. My wintry smile at that resemblance seemed to
exasperate him.

"What were you going to say?" I quietly inquired.

"Oh, hell!" he exclaimed, with quite unexpected vigor.

"I hope the children are out of hearing," I reminded him,
solemn-eyed.

"Yes, the children!" he cried, catching at the word exactly as a
drowning man catches at a lifebelt. "The children! That's just the
root of the who