"I was thinking...."
And Van der Welcke began to wobble up and down with laughter.
"Oh, but I say! Woa! woa! Don't go jumping about on my stomach like that! Hi! Stop! Keep still! What's the joke?"
"I was thinking ... of your Grandpapa's face ... if ... when I was your age ... I had hauled him up like that by his arms and said to him, 'If you keep still ... if you keep still...!'"
Addie's sense of humour made him see the picture at once: Grandpapa, getting on for forty and very stately and dignified, and Papa, a boy like himself; and Papa saying:
"If you keep still, old chap, you can stay like that!"
And both of them burst with laughter, one on top of the other; and Addie, whom his father's weight prevented from laughing as he would have liked to, flung his legs madly in the air, almost stood on his head, until Van der Welcke tumbled backwards, with his head lower than his feet:
"Bother you! I was just so comfortable!"
Addie took pity on Papa, pulled him up again under his arms, dragged him about most disrespectfully, first shoved his head on his chest ... no, that hurt ... then a little lower down ... on his stomach.... There, he could stay like that....
But Van der Welcke kept on laughing like a lunatic. And Addie was the first to recover his seriousness: