“Mum’s the word for three minutes,” said Dick, pointing to a huge Yankee clock which stood on the chimney-piece, with a model frigate in a glass case, and a painted sea and sky on one side of it, and a model light-vessel in a glass case, and a painted sea and sky on the other.
There was profound wisdom in this arrangement. If Dick had ordered silence for an indefinite space of time, there would have been discontent, approximating to despair, in Babel’s bosom, and, therefore, strong temptation to rebellion. But three minutes embraced a fixed and known period of time. The result was a desperate effort at restraint, mingled with gleeful anticipation. The elder children who could read the clock stared eagerly at the Yankee time-piece; the younger ones who couldn’t read the clock, but who knew that the others could, stared intently at their seniors, and awaited the signal. With the exception of hard breathing, the silence was complete; the baby being spell-bound by example, and the feeble remarks of the infant—which had been transferred to the arms of the eldest girl—making no impression worth speaking of.
“You are very kind,” said Nora, “I’ll stay for breakfast with pleasure. Grandmother won’t be up for an hour yet, and father’s not at home just now.”
“Werry good,” said Dick, taking a short black pipe out of his coat-pocket, “that’s all right. And ’ow do ’ee like Ramsgate, Nora, now you’ve had a fair trial of it?”
“I think I like it better than Yarmouth; but perhaps that is because we live in a more airy and cheerful street. I would not have troubled you so early, Mr Moy”—(“’Tain’t no trouble at all, Nora; werry much the reverse”)—“but that I am anxious to hear how you got on with poor Billy—”
At this point Babel burst forth with redoubled fury. Dick was attacked and carried by storm; the short black pipe was seized, and an old hat was clapped on his head and thrust down over his eyes! He gave in at once, and submitted with resignation. He struck his colours, so to speak, without firing a shot, and for full five minutes breasted the billows of a sea of children manfully, while smart Mrs Moy spread the breakfast-table as quietly as if nothing were going on, and Nora sat and smiled at them.
Suddenly Dick rose for the second time from his dive, flung off the foam, tossed aside the baby, rescued the infant from impending destruction, and thundered “Silence! mum’s the word for three minutes more.”
“That’s six, daddy!” cried the eldest boy, whose spirit of opposition was growing so strong that he could not help indulging it, even against his own interests.
“No,” said Dick sternly.
“It was three minutes last time,” urged the boy; “an’ you said three minutes more this time; three minutes more than three minutes is six minutes, ain’t it?”