"But don't you see, my pet," Granny said, more calmly; "don't you see what rude questions you asked Dr. Saunders? Oh, I felt ashamed of my little Chris!"
The little beggar at this point crawled to the bottom of his crib.
"I shall stay down here," said a muffled voice. "I shall stay here always and never come back again, as my Granny is so unkind."
"But you must see," she reiterated, addressing a shapeless mass of bed-clothes, "that you asked the kind doctor very naughty questions, and very silly ones too. Did you not understand when Briggs said that he had no head, she meant that he had a bad memory, my child? Did you not understand that? And did you not think how insulting, how very insulting it was to ask him such a question? And about the tonic too. Surely, my darling, if you had thought you must have seen that. And, especially, how wrong it was to repeat what you overheard. Does not my pet see what his Granny means?"
The mass of bed-clothes moved impatiently, but there was no reply.
"As for me," put in Briggs with dignity, "I felt as if I was going to sink through the floor, I was that ashamed!"
"Yes, yes, and so were we all," agreed Granny. "Indeed, had not my Chris been ill, I should have felt obliged to punish him for his thoughtlessness. But he is sorry now; that Granny feels sure of. Is he not?"
Her question was received in sullen silence.
"Come, come," she said, "this is not the way I expect my child to behave."
"Nor any other little gentleman either," put in Briggs, with asperity.