The Regent | Page 8

of himself, but the child answered with ruthless gravity and a touch of disdain (for he was a disdainful child, without bowels):
"I don't know what you mean, father." The curve of his lips (he had his grandmother's lips) appeared to say: "I wish you wouldn't try to be silly, father." However, youth forgets very quickly, and the next instant Robert was beginning once more, "Father!"
"Well, Robert?"
By mutual agreement of the parents the child was never addressed as "Bob" or "Bobby," or by any other diminutive. In their practical opinion a child's name was his name, and ought not to be mauled or dismembered on the pretext of fondness. Similarly, the child had not been baptized after his father, or after any male member of either the Machin or the Cotterill family. Why should family names be perpetuated merely because they were family names? A natural human reaction, this, against the excessive sentimentalism of the Victorian era!
"What does 'stamped out' mean?" Robert inquired.
Now Robert, among other activities, busied himself in the collection of postage stamps, and in consequence his father's mind, under the impulse of the question, ran immediately to postage stamps.
"Stamped out?" said Edward Henry, with the air of omniscience that a father is bound to assume. "Postage stamps are stamped out--by a machine--you see."
Robert's scorn of this explanation was manifest.
"Well," Edward Henry, piqued, made another attempt, "you stamp a fire out with your feet." And he stamped illustratively on the floor. After all, the child was only eight.
"I knew all that before," said Robert, coldly. "You don't understand."
"What makes you ask, dear? Let us show father your leg." Nellie's voice was soothing.
"Yes," Robert murmured, staring reflectively at the ceiling. "That's it. It says in the Encyclopaedia that hydrophobia is stamped out in this country--by Mr.. Long's muzzling order. Who is Mr.. Long?"
A second bomb had fallen on exactly the same spot as the first, and the two exploded simultaneously. And the explosion was none the less terrible because it was silent and invisible. The tidy domestic chamber was strewn in a moment with an awful mass of wounded susceptibilities. Beyond the screen the nick-nick of grandmother's steel needles stopped and started again. It was characteristic of her temperament that she should recover before the younger generations could recover. Edward Henry, as befitted his sex, regained his nerve a little earlier than Nellie.
"I told you never to touch my Encyclopaedia," said he, sternly. Robert had twice been caught on his stomach on the floor with a vast volume open under his chin, and his studies had been traced by vile thumb-marks.
"I know," said Robert.
Whenever anybody gave that child a piece of unsolicited information he almost invariably replied, "I know."
"But hydrophobia!" cried Nellie. "How did you know about hydrophobia?"
"We had it in spellings last week," Robert explained.
"The deuce you did!" muttered Edward Henry.
The one bright facet of the many-sided and gloomy crisis was the very obvious truth that Robert was the most extraordinary child that ever lived.
"But when on earth did you get at the Encyclopaedia, Robert?" his mother exclaimed, completely at a loss.
"It was before you came in from Hillport," the wondrous infant answered. "After my leg had stopped hurting me a bit."
"But when I came in nurse said it had only just happened!"
"Shows how much she knew!" said Robert, with contempt.
"Does your leg hurt you now?" Edward Henry inquired.
"A bit. That's why I can't go to sleep, of course."
"Well, let's have a look at it." Edward Henry attempted jollity.
"Mother's wrapped it all up in boracic wool."
The bed-clothes were drawn down and the leg gradually revealed. And the sight of the little soft leg, so fragile and defenceless, really did touch Edward Henry. It made him feel more like an authentic father than he had felt for a long time. And the sight of the red wound hurt him. Still, it was a beautifully clean wound, and it was not a large wound.
"It's a clean wound," he observed judiciously. In spite of himself he could not keep a certain flippant harsh quality out of his tone.
"Well, I've naturally washed it with carbolic," Nellie returned sharply.
He illogically resented this sharpness.
"Of course he was bitten through his stocking?"
"Of course," said Nellie, re-enveloping the wound hastily, as though Edward Henry was not worthy to regard it.
"Well, then, by the time they got through the stocking the animal's teeth couldn't be dirty. Everyone knows that."
Nellie shut her lips.
"Were you teasing Carlo?" Edward Henry demanded curtly of his son.
"I don't know."
Whenever anybody asked that child for a piece of information he almost invariably replied, "I don't know."
"How--you don't know? You must know whether you were teasing the dog or not!" Edward Henry was nettled.
The renewed spectacle of his own wound had predisposed Robert to feel a great and tearful sympathy for himself. His mouth now