"Wait a moment, Boodle-oodle. These sudden questions confuse me so. Mr. Bellamie would know. I told him. Yes, it was your mother. Miss Lascelles was her name, and I married her in Switzerland. We stayed at that hotel where Gubbings wrote his history of the world, and we fell out of a boat on Lake Geneva, and she was never heard of again."
"Where was I?" cried Boodles, knowing that impatience would only perplex him more.
"You were not born, darling. It was a long time after that when you were born, and your father was Canon Lascelles of Hendon."
"Dear old man, don't be so agitated," she said, putting out a hand to stroke his whiskers. "You are so puzzled you don't know what you are saying. How could my mother be drowned before I was born?"
"No, no, darling, you misunderstand me. It was my wife who disappeared mysteriously, not your mother."
"My mother was your daughter. That's one thing I want to know," said perplexed Boodles.
"Tita, we called her Tita for short," he said, glad of one fact of which he was certain.
"And my father, Canon Lascelles—really? A real canon, a man with a sort of title?" she cried, with a little joyous gasp.
"He's in British Honduras. I think that was the place—"
"Alive! My father alive!" cried Boodles. "And you never told me before! Why haven't I seen him? Why doesn't he write to me? Oh, I think you have been cruel to me, telling me those wild stories of how I came to you, keeping the truth from me all these years."