"To tell the truth, I thought so the last time I was here," replied Aunt Beatrice. "But he's still young enough to be properly trained. It's such waste of a reasonable person's time to spend it making idiotic noises at a small baby. And it's a thousand times better for the child's brain and nerves for it to be left entirely to itself." Tony said nothing, but his face began to work in a threatening manner. "I perfectly agree with you, Aunt Beatrice," responded Milly, eagerly. Lady Thomson continued: "Children should be spoken to as little as possible until they are from two to two and a half years old; then they should be taught to speak correctly." Milly chimed in: "Yes, that's always been my own view. I do feel it so important that their very first impressions should be the right ones, that the first pictures they see should be good, that they should never be sung to out of tune and in general--" Apparently this programme for babies did not commend itself to Tony; certainly the first item, enjoining silent development, did not. His face had by this time worked the right number of minutes to produce a roar, and it came. Milly picked him up, but the wounds of his spirit were not to be immediately healed, and the roar continued. Finally he had to be handed over to the parlor-maid, and so came to great happiness in the kitchen, where there were no rules against infantile conversation. Milly was flushed and disturbed. "Baby has not been properly brought up," she said. "He's been allowed his own way too much." "Since you say so, Milly, I must confess I noticed in the spring that you seemed to be bringing the child up in an easy-going, old-fashioned way I should hardly have expected of you. I hope you will begin now to study the theory of education. A mother should take her vocation seriously. I own I don't altogether understand the taste for frivolities which you have developed since you married. It's harmless, no doubt, but it doesn't seem quite natural in a young woman who has taken a First in Greats." Milly's hands grasped the arms of her chair convulsively. She looked at her aunt with desolation in her dark-ringed eyes. The last thing she had ever intended was to mention the mysterious and disastrous fate that had befallen her; yet she did it. "The person you saw here last spring wasn't I. Oh, Aunt Beatrice! Can't you see the difference?" Lady Thomson looked at her in surprise: "What do you mean? I was speaking of my visit to you in March." "And don't you see the difference? Oh, how hateful you must have found me!"