The well-bred child

This morning daughter L. was standing up on a kitchen chair at the counter while I made us both some toast. As I was buttering the toast a small chunk of butter fell from my knife onto the plate.

“Uh-oh,” said daughter L. She reached over and grabbed the fallen butter and, before I could say anything much more than “ewwww,” she had popped it into her mouth.

She rolled it around in her mouth a bit. The look on her face grew meditative. She then delicately extracted the hunk of butter and held it up between thumb and forefinger.

“No,” she said. She then politely placed it on my toast.