“Then why, exactly, do you wish me to prohibit the child from coming to Challis Court?”
“Possibly you have not realised that the child is now five years old?” said Crashaw with an air of conferring illumination.
“Indeed! Yes. An age of some discretion, no doubt,” returned Challis.
“An age at which the State requires that he should receive the elements of education,” continued Crashaw.
“Eh?” said Challis.
“Time he went to school,” explained Mr. Forman. “I’ve been after him, you know. I’m the attendance officer for this district.”
Challis for once committed a breach of good manners. The import of the thing suddenly appealed to his sense of humour: he began to chuckle and then he laughed out a great, hearty laugh, such as had not been stirred in him for twenty years.
“Oh! forgive me, forgive me,” he said, when he had recovered his self-control. “But you don’t know; you can’t conceive the utter, childish absurdity of setting that child to recite the multiplication table with village infants of his own age. Oh! believe me, if you could only guess, you would laugh with me. It’s so funny, so inimitably funny.”
“I fail to see, Mr. Challis,” said Crashaw, “that there is anything in any way absurd or—or unusual in the preposition.”
“Five is the age fixed by the State,” said Mr. Forman. He had relaxed into a broad smile in sympathy with Challis’s laugh, but he had now relapsed into a fair imitation of Crashaw’s intense seriousness.