Sydney and Miss Osric exchanged puzzled glances. What was to be done? Of course he was naughty, but neither liked to scold him on a birthday.
Sydney had recourse to coaxing.
“There is such a lovely cake upstairs,” she said, “a cake as high as that.” She held her hand some distance from the floor. “It has sugar all over it and such lovely fruits and sweets, white and pink, and all kinds of nice things upon it. Don’t you want to see it, Pauly?”
He scorned bribery. “Want to show my twousers to the ill one!”
“What, dear?”
“To the ill one. Want to show my twousers to the ill one!”
“Lord St. Quentin, I suppose he means,” Miss Osric said aside to Sydney. “But I don’t think he would like to see the child, do you?”
Sydney was rather doubtful. “There is something so wonderful upstairs in your plate, Pauly,” she assured him insidiously; “something that has such a nice funny voice, and jumps about too, doesn’t it, Miss Osric?”
Pauly put one irresolute foot forward in the direction of the bear-guarded staircase, and then drew it back again.
“Want to show my twousers to the ill one,” he said, in the same loud sing-song voice as he had used before.