'If you mean William the Conqueror's I don't know, and he wasn't an admiral, he was a general. Godfrey, don't look out of the window—what are you thinking about?'
'I'm thinking that if the Channel Fleet had watched the harbours properly those French ships wouldn't ever have got out of port.'
'Godfrey, you must attend to what I am telling you. Now then, what was the curfew?'
'A bird with a long beak that squeals; Kiah says——'
Betty rose up majestically.
'Godfrey, if you think it is funny to pretend that you think I said curlew you are very much mistaken. I have a very great many things to do, more things than a little boy like you can count, and I can't spend all the morning with you. So I am going to write on this slate: "The curfew bell was rung at eight o'clock every night as a sign that people were to put their lights out and go to bed," and you are to go on copying it and copying it till the slate is quite full.'
Godfrey said not a word, only watched while Betty wrote the words in a bold round hand, and ruled double lines with a decided sweep of her slate pencil, and then walked out of the room with her most 'maiden aunt' expression. But when she was gone I am sorry to say that he got on a chair, reached down his wooden ship from its high shelf, climbed out of the window into the garden, and went out through a gate in the fence and across the fields. He was not back when Betty and Angel came in together, to find the blank slate and Godfrey's high chair pushed up to the table, but no one in the room. They called his name about the garden and paddock, and just as Betty was beginning to get into a panic and to declare it was all her fault, he appeared, coming back slowly across the field towards the wicket gate. The two aunts met him, Angel looking grieved and Betty indignant.
'Godfrey, this is very naughty,' began Angel, gravely.
'I don't see that you can have any heart at all,' said Betty, 'because it's quite plain you want to break both ours. Perhaps when we are both in our graves, with stones over us like Miss Jane's—only we couldn't afford near such large ones—you'll feel something pricking you.'
'I know I shall,' said her nephew promptly, 'because then Penny would pin my collar, and she always sticks the point of the pin inside.'