"Never!" cried the Idiot. "Children, Mr. Brief, as I understand them--and I have known three very well; myself as a boy, and Tommy and Mollie--children, as I understand them, are never naughty for the mere fun of being so. Their wickedness grows out of their wonderful stores of unexpended and unexpendable energy. Take my son Thomas on last Saturday afternoon, for instance. It was a rainy Saturday, and Tommy, instead of being out-of-doors all morning and afternoon getting rid of his superfluous vitality, had been cooped up in the house all day doing nothing. Shortly before dinner we had a difference of opinion which lasted for more time than I like to think about. I was tired and irritable. Tommy wasn't tired, but he _was_ irritable, and, from his point of view, was as right as I was. He had the best of me to the extent that I was tired and he wasn't. I had the best of him to the extent that I had authority and he hadn't--" "And who came out ahead?" asked Mr. Pedagog. "I did," said the Idiot, "because I was bigger than he was; but what I was going to say was this: Mr. Brief would have sent him to bed, thereby adding to the boy's stock of energy, already too great for his little mind to control." "And what did you do?" asked Mr. Brief. "Nothin'," said a small but unmistakably masculine voice from behind the portieres. "Thomas!" said the Idiot, severely, as all turned to see who had spoken. [Illustration: "A LITTLE FIGURE CLAD IN WHITE"] A little figure clad in white, ably supported by a still smaller figure, also clad in white, but with an additional ruffle about the neck, both of them barefooted, appeared in the doorway. "Why, Mollie!" said Mrs. Idiot. "We comed down to thee how you wath gettin' along," said the little girl. "Yes, we did," said the boy. "But he didn't do a thing to me that day," he added, climbing on his father's knee and snuggling down against his vest-pocket with a sweet little sigh of satisfaction. "Did you, pa?" "Yes, Thomas," said the Idiot. "Don't you remember that I ignored you utterly?" [Illustration: "'I'D RATHER BE SPANKED THAN NOT NOTICED AT ALL'"] "Yes, I do," said Tommy. "But I'd rather be spanked than not noticed at all." "I am afraid," said Mr. Pedagog a few hours later, as he and Mrs. Pedagog were returning home, "I am very much afraid that the Idiot's children are being spoiled." "I hope they are!" returned the good lady, "for really, John, I never knew a boy or a girl to grow into man or womanhood and amount to anything who hadn't been spoiled in childhood. Spoiling is another name for the attitude of parents who make comrades of their children and who do not set themselves up as tyrants--" "But the veneration of a child for his father and mother--" Mr. Pedagog began. "Should not degenerate into the awe which one feels for an unrelenting despot!" interrupted Mrs. Pedagog. The old gentleman discreetly retired from the field.