I pondered deeply while my wife and Winnie cleared away the dishes and put Bobsey into his little crib. I felt that the time for a decided1 change had come, and that it should be made before the evils of our lot brought sharp and real trouble.
How should I care for my household? If I had been living on a far frontier among hostile Indians I should have known better how to protect them. I could build a house of heavy logs and keep my wife and children always near me while at work. But it seemed to me that Melissa Daggett and her kin2 with their flashy papers, and the influence of the street for Merton and Bobsey, involved more danger to my little band than all the scalping Modocs that ever whooped3. The children could not step outside the door without danger of meeting some one who would do them harm. It is the curse of crowded city life that there is so little of a natural and attractive sort for a child to do, and so much of evil close at hand.
My wife asked me humorously for the news. She saw that I was not reading my paper, and my frowning brow and firm lips proved my problem was not of a trifling4 nature. She suspected nothing more, however, than that I was thinking of taking rooms in some better locality, and she was wondering how I could do it, for she knew that my income now left but a small surplus above expenses.
At last Winnie too was ready to go to bed, and I said to her, gravely: "Here is money to pay Melissa for that paper. It was only fit for the gutter5, and into the gutter I put it. I wish you to promise me never to look at such pictures again, or you can never hope to grow up to be a lady like mamma."
The child flushed deeply, and went tearful and penitent6 to bed. Mousie also retired7 with a wistful look upon her face, for she saw that something of grave importance occupied my mind.
No matter how tired my wife might be, she was never satisfied to sit down until the room had been put in order, a green cloth spread upon the supper-table and the student lamp placed in its centre.
Merton brought his school-books, and my wife took up her mending, and we three sat down within the circle of light.
"Don't do any more work to-night," I said, looking into my wife's face, and noting for a few moments that it was losing its rounded lines.
Her hands dropped wearily into her lap, and she began gratefully: "I'm glad you speak so kindly8 to-night, Robert, for I am so nervous and out of sorts that I couldn't have stood one bit of fault-finding—I should have said things, and then have been sorry all day to-morrow. Dear knows, each day brings enough without carrying anything over. Come, read the paper to me, or tell me what you have been thinking about so deeply, if you don't mind Merton's hearing you. I wish to forget myself, and work, and everything that worries me, for a little while."
"I'll read the paper first, and then, after Merton has learned his lessons, I will tell you my thoughts—my purpose, I may almost say. Merton shall know about it soon, for he is becoming old enough to understand the 'why' of things. I hope, my boy, that your teacher lays a good deal of stress on the WHY in all your studies."
"Oh, yes, after a fashion."
"Well, so far as I am your teacher, Merton, I wish you always to think why you should do a thing or why you shouldn't, and to try not to be satisfied with any reason but a good one."
Then I ............