"Roland!" I exclaimed. "What is that?"
"It's a piece of Clare's hair," he told us, at once and quite frankly. Even in his worst moods I never knew him tell an untruth. "I cut it off just before I came away from home, so I hadn't time to put it anywhere but in my pocket. I did it because she wouldn't let me do cooking on her toy kitchen range, that works with methylated spirit. I just got my scissors quickly and cut it. Nobody knew I did it, though I dare say Nurse has found out by now."
"Oh, Roland!"
My reproachful exclamation was accompanied by a stream of reproaches from the horrified Miss Torry. I remembered then that all through his few short years hitherto Little Yeogh Wough had shown a great interest in cooking. And he had never even seen the kitchen, or any part of the basement, of his London home yet. He had called the basement "Griffiths's Dark," when he was two and a half, because Griffiths was the name of the cook who reigned there at that time; and the name had stuck. We had all spoken of the basement ever since as "Griffiths's Dark."
And so his curious leanings towards cooking had led him to such a breach of good conduct as the cutting off of a goodly portion of his four-and-a-half-year-old sister's hair because she would not let him use her toy range with methylated spirit!
In very deed he had fallen from grace during this fortnight of lax discipline.
"Roland," I said, "I would give you a whipping for this if I had actually caught you doing it, or had been told of it at once. But, as things are, I will punish you in another way. I will not come and see you in bed for a whole week. I am very much hurt indeed. I did not think you could ever behave so badly."
He said nothing. But his lips quivered and his eyes filled with tears.
He was to sleep in a little room opening out of mine and his father's. I meant at first not to go in there at all, but on second thoughts I simply went in and saw that his bedclothes were properly arranged. I did not say a second good night to him, but came away as if the person in the bed were a total stranger to me.
"Are you going so soon?" His voice came after me rather piteously. "Aren't you going to talk to me?"