“No,” she said, “that wouldn’t do me any good. Come here and I will scribble on you.”
Alf, relieved at her averted wrath, promptly presented his face, and she gave him green eyebrows, a red tip on his nose, and a moustache of ultramarine. Of course that made a clown of him, and he treated them extempore to various antics and witticisms brought home from a circus. Phyl came in at the door just as he finished walking round the table on his hands.
“Alf,” she said, and there came a choking little sound in her voice as she looked at his happy face, “doctor and mother want you in the drawing-room, dear.”
Alf did not notice her voice, nor Richie’s drooped jaw, nor Weenie’s startled air of sudden remembrance.
“Stand clear of the gangway, then,” he cried, and [222] ]Phyl moved hastily aside in time to allow him to make his exit turning brilliant Catherine-wheels through the door, across the passage, and, with a skilful twist, right into the drawing-room.
In the dining-room nobody spoke for a long time. Dolly went to the window and stood looking out at the willow-trees and grass; and once she broke the silence by laughing in a queer little way, for Jingo was on the path engaged in tearing an old sock to bits, and once he tossed it up in the air and tried to catch it on his nose in the way Alf taught him to catch lumps of sugar. Richie went to Dolly’s side to look also, and they put their arms round each other for comfort as they stood waiting. Phyl presently picked up the geography-book.
“Be saying your gulfs, Freddie,” she said. But when Freddie, also distraught, made the grave statement that the Gulf of Carpentaria was the chief gulf in Victoria, and Broken Bay was the harbour of Perth, she allowed it to go uncontradicted.
Clif and Ted were in the room too, now.
“Poor little beggar!” Clif said, and puffed vigorously at his pipe.
There came a quick clatter across the passage, and Alf burst into their midst again with eyes blazing wrathfully under their green brows, and the blue moustache twitching with the muscles of his face.