Noll smiled dryly:
“Mother still thinks I am in knickerbockers,” said he. “She wanted me to wear a sailor hat last summer with ribbons hanging down behind and H.M.S. Sardine on it in gold letters. Women have the strangest ideas about men’s clothes—even the married ones.”
Caroline Baddlesmere went to the boy and put her arm through his.
“What an inky state you get into, my dear Noll!” she said.
“Literature is not to be made without the spilling of much ink,” said Noll.
Caroline Baddlesmere sighed sadly.
“Well, Noll, after to-day you need not trouble with the spilling of ink,” she said.
“Why, mother?”
Mrs. Baddlesmere turned to Gomme:
“I suppose, Netherby, you know that our days at the old office are over—that we have failed to make the ends of this paper meet!”