"
"Of course."
"I don't like people stuffing him full of candy and ice cream. I want
to bring him up with a good digestion and sound teeth."
* * * * *
Daniel took my hand as we went through the factory from department to
department. I enjoyed a paternal pride in the handsome, pale,
preternaturally intelligent little fellow.
"Look at the young father!" exclaimed one girl softly to another, with a
touch of pathos in her voice, intimating that perhaps I was a widower.
I blushed with pleasure to the tips of my ears, to be thought the father
of so prepossessing a child.
It delighted him to look into the huge bake ovens where first the wheat
was baked in big brown loaves, before it was broken up into biscuit
form. I thought of Hank Spalton and how he was supposed to have grown
strong on a diet of Best o' Wheat.
It was customary to serve sight-seers, in a dining room kept for that
purpose, with Best o' Wheat and cream, and wheat coffee ... free....
With a little reluctance Dan sat down and ate.
"Hum! that was good; but look here, Buzzer" (that was the nickname he
had invented for me) you mustn't tell Mubby."
"Mubby?"
"That's what mother and I call my father."
"Of course I won't tell him ... and now we must go to a restaurant and
have something real to eat."
"I can't. I don't dare. But I'll sit and watch you eat.
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