"He may want," retorted Ernie. "He won't get."
His mother made a little grimace.
"If Alf wants a thing he usually gets it."
Ernie flashed white.
"Ah," he said. "We'll see what dad says."
It was a new move in the family game, and unexpected. Anne was completely taken a-back. She felt that Ernie was not playing fair. There had always been an unwritten family law, inscribed by the mother on the minds of the two boys in suggestible infancy, that dad should be left outside all broils and controversies; that dad should be spared unpleasantness, and protected at any cost.
She was shocked, almost to pleading.
"You'd never tell him!"
"He's the very one I would tell then!" retorted Ernie, rejoicing in his newly-discovered vein of brutality.
"Only worry him," she coaxed.