IT was things like this that made them reserve judgment about Jamie who was born not long after. By the time he was two and a half, Alice had become a humble parent. She had changed from her attitude of the beneficent providence in the home, to an observer. Instead of saying "Let there be Light!" in a grand way, or "Let there be Order!", or "Let there be Clean Faces!", she tried to understand the why of things. She began to understand that children aren't like plants. The same course of treatment doesn't get the same results.
You can divide parents into two classes—the humble and wistful ones, who like Tom and Alice wonder how much they can find out about their children; and those around whom still lingers the assumption of Divine Rights of Parents.
Some mothers, as soon as they come near their children, pounce on them and set about, as briskly as possible, making them good. Indeed, there are still a great many mothers who spend all their time making their children over into different kinds of persons from the sort they were born. This is hard on both of them, and the only thing that happens is that the child grows a shell to keep his mother out, and grows up inside it in peace, but not nearly as nice and big as if he hadn't any shell—shells are cramping things at best.
Not all parents do this, but there is hardly a parent living who does not greet his children with:
