o sleep, of course."

"Well, let's have a look at it." Edward Henry attempted jollity.

"Mother's wrapped it all up in boracic wool."

The bed-clothes were drawn down and the leg gradually revealed. And
the sight of the little soft leg, so fragile and defenceless, really
did touch Edward Henry. It made him feel more like an authentic father
than he had felt for a long time. And the sight of the red wound hurt
him. Still, it was a beautifully clean wound, and it was not a large
wound.

"It's a clean wound," he observed judiciously. In spite of himself he
could not keep a certain flippant harsh quality out of his tone.

"Well, I've naturally washed it with carbolic," Nellie returned
sharply.

He illogically resented this sharpness.

"Of course he was bitten through his stocking?"

"Of course," said Nellie, re-enveloping the wound hastily, as though
Edward Henry was not worthy to regard it.

"Well, then, by the time they got through the stocking the animal's
teeth couldn't be dirty. Everyone knows that."

Nellie shut her lips.

"Were you teasing Carlo?" Edward Henry demanded curtly of his son.

"I don't know."

Whenever anybody asked that child for a piece of information he almost
invariably replied, "I don't know."

"How--you don't know? You must know whether you were teasing the dog
or not!" Edward Henry was nettled.

The renewed spectacle of his own wound had predisposed Robert to feel
a great and tearful sympathy for himself. His mouth now began to take
strange shapes and to increase magically in area, and beads appeared
in the corners of his large eyes.

"I--I was only measuring his tail by his hind leg," he blubbered and
then sobbed.

Edward Henry did his best to save his dignity.

"Come, come!" he reasoned, less menacingly. "Boys who can read
_Encyclopaedias_ mustn't be cry-babies. You'd no business measuring
Carlo's tail by his hind leg. You ought to remember that that dog's
older than you." And this remark, too, he thought rather funny, but
apparently he was alone in his opinion.

Then he felt something against his calf. And it was Carlo's nose.
Carlo was a large, very shaggy and unkempt Northern terrier, but owing
to vagueness of his principal points, due doubtless to a vagueness
in his immediate ancestry, it was impossible to decide whether he had
come from the north or the south side of the Tweed. This ageing friend
of Edward Henry's, surmising that something unusual was afoot in his
h