Bobby was so accustomed to this speech that he paid no attention to it. He sauntered round the room with Nobbles in his hand, and his eyes were riveted on the stern and gloomy faces looking out of their frames.
'Mr. Jenkins,' he said very politely, 'will your picture be put up there when you're dead?'
'Law, no!' said Jenkins testily. 'What a silly child you be! Tis only grandees can have their picters taken.'
'Has my father had his picture taken?'
'More'n I can say. He don't belong to this house. Your mother's picter were taken, and the mistress keeps it locked up. She were wonderful fond of Miss Vera.'
Bobby was not half so interested in his dead mother as in his living father.
'I don't belong to the House,' he murmured to himself. 'Father has got a big house somewheres where he'll take me when he comes home, and everything in that house will belong to me and father—all mine own!'
He reflected for a minute with shining complacency upon this idea. Then he looked up at the pictures again.
'I'm so glad they're all dead. I shouldn't like to see them going up and down stairs. I'm sure they'd scold me!'
'Don't you be abusin' your elders, Master Bobby; and liking them dead be not a right state o' mind at all.'