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 [21] 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.