"How
can you expect the child to learn good English, when you talk to him
like that? Run along, Buddy, and play like a good boy." She gave him a
little cake to accelerate his departure and to turn his mind from
further argument, and after he was gone she swung the discussion to
Buddy and his growing tendency toward grappling with problems beyond his
seven years. Also, she pointed out the necessity for choosing one's
language carefully in his presence.
Mason, therefore, finished wiping the dishes almost in silence, and left
the house as soon as he was through, with the feeling that women were
not by nature intended to be really companionable. He had, for instance,
been struck with the humorous side of Ford and Josephine's perfectly
ridiculous antipathy, and had lingered in the kitchen because of a
half-conscious impulse to enjoy the joke with some one. And Mrs. Kate
had not taken the view-point which appealed to him, but had been
self-consciously virtuous in her determination to lend Ford a helping
hand, and resentful because Josephine failed to feel also the urge of
uplifting mankind.
Mason, poor man, was vaguely nettled; he did not see that Ford needed
any settlement-worker encouragement.
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