One Sunday I was entertained in a farm home of a member of a rural church. The intelligence and unusually good behavior of the only child in the home, a little four-year-old boy, impressed me.

Then I discovered one reason for the child’s charm. The mother was at the kitchen sink, washing the intricate parts of the cream separator when the little boy came to her with a magazine.

“Mother,” he asked, “what is this man in the picture doing?”

To my surprise she dried her hands, sat down on a chair, and taking the boy in her lap, she spent the next few minutes answering his questions.

After the child had left, I commented on her having interrupted her chores to answer the boy’s question, saying, “Most mothers wouldn’t have.”

“I expect to be washing cream separators for the rest of my life,” she told me, “but never again will my son ask me that question.”