"If you don't take sweets, Jack," observed the Rector from the other end of the table, "allow me to introduce you to this melon—a present from the Squire. Take the melon round to Sir John, Stiffy, and he shall cut in where he pleases; though, strictly speaking," he added, with simple enjoyment of his own joke, "it is hardly etiquette to cut anything you have been introduced to!"
There was a momentary stoppage in the general mastication of "Baby Maud," and the right hand of each Vereker present performed the same evolution. Next moment the repast was resumed, but the guest observed, not without surprise, that every christening-mug—even Daphne's—had a knife lying across its top.
"That is one of our customs," explained Cilly politely. "We do it whenever any one makes a stale joke."
"Alice through the Looking-Glass," corroborated Nicky, scooping up trifle with an air of severe reproof—"page two hundred and seven."
"You see my servile and dependent position in this house, Jack!" said the Rector, not altogether dejectedly.
"I perceive that I have dropped into a Republic," said Sir John Carr.
"Republic? A more absolute despotism never existed. Wait until you have transgressed one of the Laws of the Medes and Persians and been brought up for judgment before my eldest daughter? We know, don't we—eh, Nicky?"
Brian Vereker projected the furtive smile of a fellow-conspirator upon his youngest daughter, and then turned to gaze with unconcealed fondness and pride upon his eldest.
"I trust that when I transgress," said Sir John, "I shall get off under the First Offender's Act."
"You have broken that already," said Daphne readily; "but it's Dad's fault. It is twenty minutes to three, and you two ought to have been smoking in the study ten minutes ago instead of talking here. I want to get this room cleared for the children to learn their Catechism in."