Baby Blossom, her duty done, took a header into the soft sofa-cushion, shrieking with delight and waving her plump little legs in the air. Deryck, though deserted, kept his place in the "row." He had not yet finished with the text.
"Do you consider it true, mother?" he questioned, and his dark eyes searched her face.
"Why—well—yes, dear, I suppose so," answered Flower, vaguely. "Baby, take care! You will break your neck!"
"What does 'anythink' mean?" inquired Dicky.
"You should not say 'anythink'; it is anything."
"It is anythink in nurse's Bible," asserted Dicky, "and I suppose it means all that comes into your head. Anything you can think of."
"I believe," said Flower, with a sudden inspiration, "that it merely refers to the religious experience of the apostles."
"Goodness," said Dicky, in nurse's best manner when arguing with Marsdon, "then why don't it say so?" Adding, almost immediately, in his own quiet, rather sad, little voice, "And what good is it to us then, mummie?"
"None whatever," replied Flower, with decision, rising from the floor and hugging baby. She felt she was scoring now and reasserting her mental superiority. "That is why I object to people teaching such words to children," she remarked from among Blossom's curls.
The small Deryck was silent. He stood very erect and gave a sharp pull to the front of his little white waist-coat, swallowing hard, as if something had hurt him. Flower felt slightly uncomfortable at being thus suddenly left with the last word. Dicky was so very masculine, and she was not at all sure of her own theology.