“Have you had tea, Colin?” she asked.
“Now have I, or have I not? I don’t believe I have, but I don’t want any. I shall sit on the floor, if Dennis can make room for me. Lie down again, Dennis, exactly as you were before, and we’ll all be fearfully comfortable. Now what’s the story?”
“Oh, it’s only a rotten yarn, Father,” he said. “The master I’m up to doesn’t like mice. So—so someone bought a clockwork mouse and wound it up, and set it running in small circles—you know how they go—just under his chair. You never saw anything so funny. He thought it was real till he heard it buzz.”
Dennis had sat down again on the floor: Colin, with a shout of laughter, put his fingers in the back of his collar, and pulled him down across his knees.
“I think I’ve got hold of that ‘someone’ by the short hairs,” he said. “What brutes you boys are! What shall we do with this brute? How long are the holidays, Dennis?”
“Three weeks and a bit.”
“And where do you want to spend them?”
“Oh here, of course.”
“You’re just like me. I never want to go away from here, unless it’s to Capri. Now let’s talk in a whisper, so that your mother can’t hear. She doesn’t like Capri, Dennis. She’s not been there for twelve years. That summer, don’t you remember, when you were one year old?”
“Of course I don’t remember,” said Dennis.