done about Men; and yet we all know, while they upset every household in which they set a foot, we can't get on without them!"
Yet there were times enough when Alice wished one could. For the more Tom mixed himself up in the government of the family the worse things got. Though, of course, it was a challenge to Tom to mix himself when Robert pushed back his plate at the dinner table and proclaimed:
"I hate boiled beef!"
It marked a crisis in the life of the Marceys. Tom arose from his chair and slammed his napkin upon it and burst out:
"There is one thing I will not stand—there is one torture I will not endure"—his language was Biblical—"and that is these children commenting upon the food set before them. I am so familiar with the fact that Sara hates tapioca that the sight of it makes me shudder, much as I like it myself. I have got to the point, Alice, where your struggles with Jamie over soup are a thing that gets on my nerves. And when for a week on end—a week on end mark you—I hear Robert saying, 'I won't eat this,' I have reached the limit! There is nothing wrong with the food. Therefore, there must be something wrong with the children!" Alice expected him to leave the room at this point, but he paused at the door to say, "Sometimes they eat everything in sight, and you can't stop 'em eating; they gulp their food like young cormorants, which is just as bad, I think, and I am tired of it."
He had placed the responsibility of everything on Alice's shoulders. From his tone one might have gathered that he had no part or parcel in these children, anyway; that they were her children, and that by some sleight of hand, he had got rid of his parenthood—and
