“Yes, I did, mother,” said Vince, whose head was growing clearer now. “I was so hungry I went into the larder and got that piece of cold pudding.”
“Wurrrh!” roared the Doctor, uttering a peculiar growling sound, and, to the astonishment of mother and son, he caught up the pillow and gave Vince a bang with it which knocked him back on the bolster. “Cold pudding!” he cried. “Here! try a shoe-sole to-morrow night, and see if you can digest that. Come to bed, my dear. Look here, Vince: tell Mr Deane to give you some lessons in natural history, and then you’ll learn that you are not an ostrich, but a boy.”
The next minute Vince was in the dark, but not before Mrs Burnet had managed to bend down and kiss him, accompanying it with one of those tender good-nights which he never forgot to the very last.
But Vince felt hot and angry with what had passed.
“I wish father hadn’t hit me,” he muttered. “He never did before. I don’t like it; and he seemed so cross. I wonder whether he did feel angry.”
Vince lay for some minutes puzzling his not quite clear brain as to whether his father was angry or pretending. There was the dull murmur of voices from the next room, as if a conversation were going on, but he could not tell whether his mother was taking his part or no. Then, all at once, there came an unmistakable “Ha, ha, ha!” in the Doctor’s gruff voice, and that settled it.
“He couldn’t have been cross,” thought Vince, “or he wouldn’t laugh like that. And it was only the pillow after all.”
Two minutes later the boy was asleep, and breathing gently without dreams, and so soundly that he did not hear the handle of the door creak softly, nor a light step on the floor. Neither did he hear a voice say: “Asleep, Vince?” nor feel a hand upon his forehead, nor two soft, warm lips take their place as a gentle voice whispered: “God bless my darling boy!”