“You know, my dear,” he continued, sipping his wine in the coolest way possible, “I’ve told you at least a hundred times that it’s one of the prettiest and most innocent little lambs I ever saw: so, come, my love, let’s drink the darling’s health; and I’ll give you a toast--‘May we ne’er want a baby, nor a bottle to give it!’” I let him go on, for I saw that he was in a nasty, tantalizing humour, and that nothing would please him better than to get my blood up; but I wasn’t going to let him. Accordingly, I rang the bell for tea, and asked him, as I was nursing the child, and he seemed to want something to do, just to make it. I declare I never knew such poor, helpless, ignorant things as the men are!--for, positively and truly, Edward was obliged to ask me to tell him how many spoonfuls he was to put in. And he calls himself a lord of the creation, too! Pretty lord of the creation, indeed, not even to know how to make so much as a simple cup of tea! So I had my laugh at him, and asked him, in my sly, quiet way, how he would ever be able to manage without us. Then I told him, of course, that he was to put in one spoonful for each of us, and one for the pot. “One for the pot!” he exclaimed; “what do you mean by that? How can the pot want a spoonful? I shan’t do anything of the kind.” I really thought I should have died of laughter at seeing any one so stupid, and said--“Lord! how foolish you are, Edward! Why, of course it’s only an extra spoonful, to make it better for ourselves; only it’s always customary, when you’re making tea, to say that it is for the pot.” “Ah!” he returned--“I see! It’s the old story over again: doing something for ourselves, and making it out as if for another. And I’m very much afraid that, in these days of excessive philanthropy, more than one-half of what is termed charity is, after all, nothing more than ‘one for the pot.’” I knew, if I answered him, he would go on all night, so I held my tongue; and I declare if he didn’t go putting almost every virtue down as “one for the pot,” and had the impudence to say that the shilling I put into the plate after the charity sermon, the Sunday before last, was not done for the sake of the orphans, but out of fear of not doing as other people did, and consequently was really and truly “one for the pot;” and that the beer which I drank, and which I said I took solely on dear little Kitty’s account, might also be put down as “one for the pot.”