Do Babies Pay ?

Otago Witness, Issue 2762, 20 February 1907, Page 79

Do Babies Pay ?

The discussion on this subject does not 6eem yet to be abated. Now it is asked, does a two-year-old baby pay for itself up to the time it reaches that interesting age? Sometimes I think not. I thought so yesterday, when my own baby slipped into my study and "scrubbed"' the carpet and his best white dres3 with my bottle of ink. He was playing in the coal-cellar tea minutes after a clean dxese was put on him, and later in the day he pasted two shillings' worth of postage stamps on the parlour wall and poured five shillings' worth of the choicest " White Rose" perfumery ouc of tlie window, "to see it wain." Then he due; out the centre of a nieelv— baked cake, and was found in the middle of the dining room table with the sugarbowl between his legs and most of the contents in his stomach. He has already cost over £20 in doctors' bills, and I feel "that I am right in attributing my few grey hairs to the misery I endured walking the floor with him at night during the first year of his bfe. What has he ever done to pay me for that? Ah ! I hear his little feet pattering along out in the hall. I hoar his little ripple of laughter because he has escaped from his mother and has found his way up to my study at a forbidden hour. But the door ia closed. The worthless little vagabond cannot get in, and I will not open it for him. No, I wall net. I cannot be disturbed when lam writing. I sit perfectly still. "Papa." No reply. "Peeze, papa." Grim silence. "Baby come in — peeze, papa?" He shall not come in. "Papa," says the little voice, "I lub my papa. Peoze let baby in." I am not quite a brute, and I throw open the door. In he comes with outstretched little arms, with shining eyes, with laughing face. I catch him up into my arms, and his warm, soft little arms go around my neck, and the not very clean little cheek is laid close to mine. The baby voice says, sweetly : " I lub my papa." Docs he pay? Well, I begin to think he does. He has cost me -many anxious days and nights. He has cost me time and money and care and self-sacrifice. He may cost me pain and sorrow. He has cost much ; but he has paid for it all again and again in whispering those four little words into my ear.- : — " I lub my papa"