CHAPTER XI
That evening Dr. and Mrs. Wentworth dined alone. This was quite an unusual occurrence, for their circle of friends was large and they were exceedingly hospitable. As there was nobody to entertain after dinner Mrs. Wentworth went and sat in her husband's study and "relaxed her mind over a book," while he wrote some of the innumerable and inevitable letters that fall to the lot of every headmaster. The answers to parental missives were generally submitted to Mrs. Wentworth's criticism, and she insisted upon his softening the asperities occasioned by their frequent ineptness. Dr. Wentworth did not suffer fools gladly, but his wife regarded such things from the maternal standpoint; consequently the headmaster of Hamchester got credit for a sympathetic attitude he by no means deserved.
At that moment he was dealing with the case of one Pinner, an extremely stupid boy of seventeen in a low form, whose mother wrote saying she would like him to begin at once to specialise with a view to entering the Indian Civil Service later on.
Suddenly Mrs. Wentworth laid down her book and sat listening.
"Isn't that one of the children?" she asked.
Dr. Wentworth, deep in the demolition of Pinner's prospects, did not answer.
"I'm sure it's one of the children," Mrs. Wentworth repeated, and hastened upstairs.
Dismal wails smote upon her ear as she neared the night nurseries, and she found Punch sitting up in bed flushed and tearful, and not to be pacified by his devoted nurse who was standing by his cot alternately soothing and remonstrating.
"Hush, Punch! you'll wake Pris and Prue in the next room. What is the matter? Did you have a bad dream? Were you frightened?"
"No," Punch proclaimed in a muffled sort of roar, "I'm not fitened, but I can't sleep because she won't sing Kevin. I can't mimember it and I can't sleep. Oh, do sing Kevin."