PARTISAN REVIEW
89
"Who knows? Who knows? Strangers knock at the door. They
say: How ar·e you? Must I turn them away? They say: Don't you
remember me? We met twenty years ago, perhaps. Or ten years. I
have a head like a cat. And who remembers a child? But men are
boys. A chocolate cake
is
never wrong."
Gilbert said: "Ah-ha! So it's cavaliers now, gigolos at tea time!
Valentines !"
Mrs. Anderson turned pink; but she smiled roguishly. "What an
idiot!" She pretended to be waspish: "Naturally, here I sit all alone,
no
one visits, no one knows me. Incognito! Life draws to evening and
I
must sit like a mouse in a hole."
Gilbert laughed outright: "Don't try your tricks on me, Mam–
ma! Tell me the name of the man."
She half turned: "Go on, go! I must put the dishes together.
A
person lives with you three years and never brings you as much
as -"
she showed the tip of her little finger, "that of a cake. No
thought, no heart. Another person who scarcely knows you at
all
calls
upon you and brings you an iced cake with cherries on top.
I
call that good manners. Manners are born, not taught: they come
from the heart. To be kind to the old
is
a sign of good character.
We have nothing to offer; so
if
they love us, we are grateful!"
Gilbert cried out: "Theodore! My cousin Theodore
is
coming."
She said: "Theo! Pooh! You know nothing-a grown-up
child."
Suddenly she cackled angrily: "Theo! He spent three years
in
my house and never thought of bringing home so much as that - of
sausage, not a solitary piece of chicken, not an egg."
"But he paid us rent," said Gilbert.
Gilbert became enthusiastic. Theodore,
his
cousin from Germany,
had knocked at the door when Gilbert was fifteen and Theodore
about twenty-eight:
"I'm your cousin Theodore from Hamburg."
Gilbert reminded his mother of this. She now said:
"Yes, it could have been a highway robber; I come back and
there I find a man in my house."
"But it was Theodore."
"It could have been AI Capone - a gangster! At five you had
more sense than at fifteen."
