“You must be dreadfully hungry,” she said; “one can generally take it for granted that your hands are crying out for the scrubbing-brush. I believe, Freddie, before they let you into heaven the archangel who keeps the keys will say in a hollow voice, ‘Ferederick James Allison Wise, go back and wash your hands.’”
Freddie smiled rather nervously at the pleasantry and watched his sister uncertainly. Surely it was too much good fortune for him to expect that she had forgotten his afternoon’s behaviour! He was her pupil, being considered as yet too young to go daily the long distance the others went to school, and this morning had she not fairly cried with rage and vexation over the daily struggle of his music lesson? And this afternoon when geography, and arithmetic, [197] ]and copy-books were all in neat readiness on the dining-room table, had he not slipped away entirely and gone to play marbles behind the stables with Davey, the impish house-boy?
Perhaps, he told himself relievedly at the sight of her calm face, she was appeased by the excellent washing he had given himself. What a very good thing he had thought of it!
Her eyes were straying about half abstractedly.
“Are you looking for anything,—shall I find it?” he said solicitously.
“Yes, the knife-sharpener, Freddie, have you seen it anywhere? Your father will call out if it isn’t on the table.”
Freddie looked about busily.
“Don’t you bother, Phyl,” he said kindly, “you just go on with your work, I’ll find it for you.”
“There’s a good old laddie,” Phyl said, and fell to smoothing the salt in the corner cruets.
Freddie had to steal out on to the verandah, where in the morning he had been engaged in a railway game, for which, for some occult reason of his own, he had used all the tools in the machine-drawer, the corkscrew, tin-opener, and egg-whisk from the kitchen, and from the dining-room the knife-sharpener.