“Well, well, I didn’t mean to frighten you, but, don’t you see, it comes to this: either it’s a case of chronic disease, open only to medical treatment, if to any; or it is just a case of defective education, a piece of mischief bred of allowance which his parents cannot too soon set themselves to cure.” Mrs. Bruce was the least in the world nettled at this serious view of the case. It was one thing for her to write down hard things of her eldest boy, the pride of her heart, but a different matter for another to take her _au sérieux_. “But, my dear doctor, are you not taking a common fault of youth too seriously? It’s tiresome that he should forget so, but give him a year or two, and he will grow out of it, you’ll see. Time will steady him. It’s just the volatility of youth, and for my part I don’t like to see a boy with a man’s head on his shoulders.” The doctor resumed his drumming on the table. He had put his foot in it already, and confounded his own foolhardiness. “Well, I daresay you are right in allowing something on the score of youthful volatility; but we old doctors, whose business it is to study the close connection between mind and matter, see our way to only one conclusion, that any failing of mind or body, left to itself, can do no other than strengthen.” “Have another cup of tea, doctor? I am not sure that I understand. I know nothing about science. You mean that Fred will become more forgetful and less dependable the older he gets?” “I don’t know that I should have ventured to put it so baldly, but that’s about the fact. But, of course, circumstances may give him a bent in the other direction, and Fred may develop into such a careful old sobersides that his mother will be ashamed of him.” “Don’t laugh at me, doctor; you make the whole thing too serious for a laughing matter.” To which there was no answer, and there was silence in the room for the space of fully three minutes, while the two pondered. “You say,” in an imperious tone, “that ‘a fault left to itself must strengthen.’ What are we to do? His father and I wish, at any rate, to do our duty.” Her ruffled maternal plumage notwithstanding, Mrs. Bruce was in earnest, all her wits on the alert. “Come, I’ve scored one!” thought the doctor; and then, with respectful gravity, which should soothe any woman’s _amour propre_, “You ask a question not quite easy to answer. But allow me, first, to try and make the principle plain to you: that done, the question of what to do settles itself. Fred never forgets his cricket or other pleasure engagements? No? And why not? Because his interest is excited; therefore his whole attention is fixed on the fact to be remembered. Now, as a matter of fact, what you have regarded with full attention, it is next to impossible to forget. First get Fred to fix his attention on the matter in hand, and you may be sure he won’t forget it.”