"How did you know I was playing a funeral march?" Edward Henry demanded.
"Oh, I didn't tell him!" Nellie put in, excusing herself before she was accused. She smiled benignly, as an angel-woman, capable of forgiving all. But there were moments when Edward Henry hated moral superiority and Christian meekness in a wife. Moreover, Nellie somewhat spoiled her own effect by adding, with an artificial continuation of the smile, "You needn't look at me!"
Edward Henry considered the remark otiose. Though he had indeed ventured to look at her, he had not looked at her in the manner which she implied.
"It made a noise like funerals and things," Robert explained.
"Well, it seems to me you've been playing a funeral march," said Edward Henry to the child.
He thought this rather funny, rather worthy 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 [20] 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.