that the dog had done no serious damage--it also eased the
silent strain between himself and Nellie.

"Why did you play the Funeral March, father?" asked Robert, and the
question fell into the tranquillity of the room rather like a bomb
that had not quite decided whether or not to burst.

For the second time that evening Edward Henry was dashed.

"Have you been meddling with my music rolls?"

"No, father. I only read the labels."

This child simply read everything.

"How did you know I was playing a funeral march?" Edward Henry
demanded.

"Oh, _I_ didn't tell him!" Nellie put in, excusing herself before
she was accused. She smiled benignly, as an angel-woman, capable of
forgiving all. But there were moments when Edward Henry hated moral
superiority and Christian meekness in a wife. Moreover, Nellie
somewhat spoiled her own effect by adding, with an artificial
continuation of the smile, "You needn't look at _me_!"

Edward Henry considered the remark otiose. Though he had indeed
ventured to look at her, he had not looked at her in the manner which
she implied.

"It made a noise like funerals and things," Robert explained.

"Well, it seems to me _you've_ been playing a funeral march," said
Edward Henry to the child.

He thought this rather funny, rather worthy of himself, but the child
answered with ruthless gravity and a touch of disdain (for he was a
disdainful child, without bowels):

"I don't know what you mean, father." The curve of his lips (he had
his grandmother's lips) appeared to say: "I wish you wouldn't try to
be silly, father." However, youth forgets very quickly, and the next
instant Robert was beginning once more, "Father!"

"Well, Robert?"

By mutual agreement of the parents the child was never addressed
as "Bob" or "Bobby," or by any other diminutive. In their practical
opinion a child's name was his name, and ought not to be mauled or
dismembered on the pretext of fondness. Similarly, the child had not
been baptized after his father, or after any male member of either the
Machin or the Cotterill family. Why should family names be perpetuated
merely because they were family names? A natural human reaction, this,
against the excessive sentimentalism of the Victorian era!

"What does 'stamped out' mean?" Robert inquired.

Now Robert, among other activities, busied himself in the collection
of postage stamps, and in consequence his father's mind, under the
impulse of the question, ran imm