I admit that this sort of joke is the last infirmity of an uncle's otherwise noble mind. They regarded me sadly.
Then Lillah turned to Phyllis with a detached air. "Uncle James is being grand," she said, "because he doesn't know what law is."
"Don't you?" said Phyllis.
"Perhaps not," I murmured feebly. The nursery makes very small beer of the cynic. There was a moment's silence.
"You've told us wrong," said Phyllis sternly. "Daddy isn't ever wrong."
"So he's risen from his bar to be a sergeant," added Lillah, with the air of one finishing a story with a moral.
I'm afraid I chuckled. It was in very bad taste, of course, but I couldn't help it. I suppose George is one of the most egregious Micawbers of the English Bar, whereas I—— why, I remember noticing a brief on the mantelpiece in my chambers only last month.
"Poor Uncle James," said Phyllis in her best drawing-room tones, "perhaps if you tried very hard——"
They had mistaken my laughter for that bitter disappointed kind you get in the theatres.
"I know," said Lillah; "we'll play Germans, and Uncle James can pretend he's a sergeant."