WHEN ROBERT'S CHANCE CAME

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 13, 1 April 1909, Page 518

WHEN ROBERT'S CHANCE CAME

Little Robert, aged "four, preserited his mother with a large-sized shock the other day. It was a case of sowing a mild little breeze and reaping a fall-grown whirlwind. Robert is Mrs. B.s first, and has always had a large front seat in her affections. Even when Mrs. B. attended parties she remembered Robert, and would slip a bit of candy into lier handkerchief to carry home to him. Not that Robert did not have as much candy of his own as was good for him — and more, too — but he took an awed delight in anything which came, from a party. So his mother always produced some souvenir of her modest social dissipations with which to satisfy "Robert. A few weeks ago Robert himself went to a party — his very first. A maid brought him home and left him, together with a large paper bag, in the eager arms of his welcoming mother. The first rapture of description had scarcely begun when Mrs. B. became conscious of the bulky bag. 'Why, Robert, what's this?' ' It's for you. I brought it to you from the party.' With some misgivings Mrs. B. opened the bag. It contained a large orange, nuts, candy, grapes, cakes — in fact, a very respectable assortment of refreshments suitable to the juvenile taste. Robert had supposed it was quite the usual thing to take little consoling items to the uninvited members of one's family, and he had taken a generous delight in securing a truly noble collection for his mother. That lady faced the double problem of explaining the situation to Robert's hostess and of presenting to Robert a clear reason why what was sauce for the goose, so to speak, was a totally different thing for the gander. The explanation, which simmered down, of course, to a question of size or quantity, was far from being clear to Robert, who is low in his mind and thinks he doesn't cfife for society after all.