“I’ve always maintained that hard work’s what boys and girls need. When I was a youngster my daddy put me in the fields at six o’clock in the morning and I stayed there until six or seven o’clock at night. But these young ones coming along nowadays have got funny ideas. Take my own boy, for example. He’s pretty nearly seventeen and for the life of me, I can’t make him out. Always talking about doing something big but never knows from one day to the other what line he’s going to do big things in. I tell Molly,” he confided, leaning closer to Jean and lowering his voice, “it’s all her fault. She coddles him too much—”
“Now, William, you aren’t going into that here,” chided his wife, who had overheard him. “Carl’s nothing but a child as yet and he and Mildred are all we’ve got. He’ll come round all right.”
Back and forth the discussion raged, Mr. Hunter appealing to Jean for confirmation of his contentions, Mrs. Hunter relying on Mrs. Daquin for aid and succour. On only one point could they agree and that was Carl’s essential difference from other children. Not until Mrs. Daquin, in her desire to help Mrs. Hunter and thereby gain her favour, introduced the matter of religion did Carl Hunter’s name cease being bandied back and forth like a tennis ball between his parents.
Mrs. Hunter, tired of the argument over her son, swooped down upon the new topic with avidity. It was wholly a verbal swoop. It was difficult to imagine one of Mrs. Hunter’s proportions and dignity swooping in any other manner.
“I knew there was something I intended asking you and I almost forgot it. What church’re you planning to attend?”
“Well—er—that’s a problem we haven’t met yet,” Mrs. Daquin, somewhat flustered, replied. “You see, in Chicago I was a Baptist—and you know the Baptist saying, ‘Baptist born and Baptist bred, be a Baptist till I’m dead,’ ” she somewhat incorrectly quoted. “But my husband and his daughter, they’re Catholics—”