The twins and the Kitten (who had proved a wrapt and appreciative audience) melted away with Boojum-like stealth the moment the hall door was opened; but Ger, absorbed in the entrancing din he was making, noticed nothing, and his father had to shake him by the shoulders before he would stop.
"I suppose," Ger remarked thoughtfully, "that we must look upon father as a cross."
"He certainly is jolly cross," Uz murmured. "He should hear the row we kick up at school when we've won a match, and nobody says a syllable."
"But I mean," Ger persisted, wriggling about on his seat as though the problem tormented him, "that if father were as nice as mother we'd be too happy, and it wouldn't be good for us; like the people in Fairy stories, you know, when they're too well off, misfortunes come."
"I don't think," Buz said dryly, "that we have any cause to dread misfortunes on that score. But cheer up, Ger, it'll soon be time for the pater to go abroad, and then nobody will get jawed for six long weeks."
"I shouldn't mind the jawings so much or the punishments," said Ger, after a minute's pause, "if it wasn't for mother. She minds so, she never seems to get used to it. I'm glad she was out this afternoon—though we did want her to see the play—but whatever will she say when I can't go down to meet Reggie with the rest of you? And what'll he think?"
Ger's voice broke. Punishment had followed hard on the heels of the crime, and banishment to the schoolroom for the rest of the evening was Ger's lot. Had Mr Ffolliot belonged to a previous generation he would probably, when angry, have whacked his sons and whacked them hard. They would infinitely have preferred it. But his fastidious taste revolted from the idea of corporal punishment, and his ingenuity in devising peculiarly disagreeable penalties in expiation of their various offences, was the cause of much tribulation to his indignant offspring.
"Here is mother!" cried Buz, "and she's got Reggie. Come down and see him you others, but for heaven's sake, come quietly."
The Reggie in question was a young Sapper just then stationed at
Chatham, and a "very favourite cousin."
The Ffolliot children were in the somewhat unusual position of having no uncles and aunts, and no cousins of their own, for the sad reason that both their parents were "onlies." Therefore did they right this omission on the part of providence in their own fashion, by adopting as uncles, aunts, and cousins all pleasant guests.