intellect by discussing the sort of topics which appeal to that
genus of hopeless wasters which the Wilsons adorn."

"Was it very bad?" said I.

"Bad?" said Jonah. "Bad? When a woman with six male children
leads off by telling you that she keeps a book in which she has
faithfully recorded all the amusing sayings of her produce up to
the age of seven, it's pretty bad, isn't it?"

"Not really?"

"Fact," said Berry. "She quoted a lot of them. One of the more
nutty was a contribution from Albert on seeing his father smoking
for the first time. 'Mother, is daddy on fire' Now, that really
happened. We had about half an hour of the book. Jonah asked
her why she didn't publish it, and she nearly kissed him. It was
terrible."

"To make things worse," said Jonah, "they brought Baldwin and
Arthur with them, as specimens of what they could do in the child
line."

"How awful!" said I

"It was rather trying," said Berry. "But they were all right as
soon as we turned them on to the typewriter."

"What!" I gasped.