oubt
flattered and calmly pleased. "But I can't possibly come to-morrow.
You can see that for yourself, dear."

"No, I can't!" he cried impatiently. "What does it matter? Mother'll
be here. The kids'll be all right. After all, spring-cleaning isn't
the Day of Judgment."

"Edward Henry," said his mother, cutting in between them like a thin
blade, "I wish you wouldn't be blasphemous. London's London, and
Bursley's Bursley." She had finished.

"It's quite out of the question for me to come to-morrow, dear. I must
have notice. I really must."

And Edward Henry saw with alarm that Nellie had made up her mind, and
that the flattered calm pleasure in his suggestion had faded from her
face.

"Oh! Dash these domesticated women!" he thought, and shortly
afterwards departed, brooding, to the offices of the Thrift Club.

VIII

He timed his return with exactitude, and, going straight upstairs to
the chamber known indifferently as "Maisie's room" or "nurse's room,"
sure enough he found the three children there alone! They were fed,
washed, night-gowned and even dressing-gowned; and this was the hour
when, while nurse repaired the consequences of their revolutionary
conduct in the bathroom and other places, they were left to
themselves. Robert lay on the hearthrug, the insteps of his soft pink
feet rubbing idly against the pile of the rug, his elbows digging into
the pile, his chin on his fists, and a book perpendicularly beneath
his eyes. Ralph, careless adventurer rather than student, had climbed
to the glittering brass rail of Maisie's new bedstead and was thereon
imitating a recently-seen circus performance. Maisie, in the bed
according to regulation, and lying on the flat of her back, was
singing nonchalantly to the ceiling. Carlo, unaware that at that
moment he might have been a buried corpse but for the benignancy of
Providence in his behalf, was feeling sympathetic towards himself
because he was slightly bored.

"Hello, kids!" Edward Henry greeted them. As he had seen them before
mid-day dinner, the more formal ceremonies of salutation after
absence--so hateful to the Five Towns temperament--were happily over
and done with.

Robert turned his head slightly, inspected his father with a judicial
detachment that hardly escaped the inimical, and then resumed his
book.

("No one would think," said Edward Henry to himself, "that the
person who has just entered this room is the most enterprising and
enlightened