The panic collapsed.

PARENTS

William, aged five, had been reprimanded by his father for interrupting while his father was telling his mother about the new telephone for their house.  He sulked awhile, then went to his mother, and, patting her on the cheeks, said, “Mother dear, I love you.”

“Don’t you love me too?” asked his father.

Without glancing at him, William said disdainfully, “The wire’s busy.”

“What does your mother say when you tell her those dreadful lies?”

“She says I take after father.”

“A little lad was desperately ill, but refused to take the medicine the doctor had left.  At last his mother gave him up.

“Oh, my boy will die; my boy will die,” she sobbed.

But a voice spoke from the bed, “Don’t cry, mother.  Father’ll be home soon and he’ll make me take it.”

Mrs. White was undoubtedly the disciplinarian of the family.  The master of the house, a professor, and consequently a very busy man, was regarded by the children as one of themselves, subject to the laws of “Mother.”

Mrs. White had been ill for some weeks and although the father felt that the children were showing evidence of running wild, he seemed powerless to correct the fault.  One evening at dinner, however, he felt obliged to reprimand Marion severely.

“Marion,” he said, sternly, “stop that at once, or I shall take you from the table and punish you soundly.”

He experienced a feeling of profound satisfaction in being able to thus reprove when it was necessary and glanced across the table expecting to see a very demure little miss.  Instead, Marion and her little brother exchanged glances and then simultaneously a grin overspread their faces, while Marion said in a mirthful tone: 

“Oh, Francis, hear father trying to talk like mother!”

Robert has lately acquired a stepmother.  Hoping to win his affection this new parent has been very lenient with him, while his father, feeling his responsibility, has been unusually strict.  The boys of the neighborhood, who had taken pains to warn Robert of the terrible character of stepmothers in general, recently waited on him in a body, and the following conversation was overheard: 

“How do you like your stepmother, Bob?”

“Like her!  Why fellers, I just love her.  All I wish is I had a stepfather, too.”

“Well, Bobby, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

BOBBY (remembering private seance in the wood-shed)—­“A orphan.”

Little Eleanor’s mother was an American, while her father was a German.

One day, after Eleanor had been subjected to rather severe disciplinary measures at the hands of her father, she called her mother into another room, closed the door significantly, and said:  “Mother, I don’t want to meddle in your business, but I wish you’d send that husband of yours back to Germany.”