“But,” continued Ambrose, feeling it easier now that he had begun, “suppose we didn’t ask her?”
David’s attention was at last stirred. He turned his blue eyes gravely towards Ambrose.
“Father and mother wouldn’t like that,” he said.
Ambrose was quite ready for this objection. “Well,” he said, “we don’t know whether they would or not, because we can’t ask them now.”
“They wouldn’t,” repeated David decidedly.
“Mother would like the museum to be full,” continued Ambrose; “we know that. And we can’t get things anywhere else. She never said we were not to go to Rumborough alone.”
David sat cross-legged on the floor beside his tool-box in an attitude of the deepest thought. The idea began to be attractive, but he had not the least doubt that it was wrong.
“We know, all the same, that she wouldn’t let us go if we did ask her,” he said at last.
Ambrose felt that it was time to strike a decided blow.
“Well,” he said, with the air of one who has made up his mind, “I shall go—and of course you needn’t if you’re afraid. I shall bring home the things and put my name on all the labels, because they’ll all belong to me. It’ll scarcely be your museum at all.”