'Now then, this ain't your nursery, you know,' was his greeting.

Bobby was so accustomed to this speech that he paid no attention to it.
He sauntered round the room with Nobbles in his hand, and his eyes were
riveted on the stern and gloomy faces looking out of their frames.

'Mr. Jenkins,' he said very politely, 'will your picture be put up
there when you're dead?'

'Law, no!' said Jenkins testily. 'What a silly child you be! Tis only
grandees can have their picters taken.'

'Has my father had his picture taken?'

'More'n I can say. He don't belong to this house. Your mother's
picter were taken, and the mistress keeps it locked up. She were
wonderful fond of Miss Vera.'

Bobby was not half so interested in his dead mother as in his living
father.

'I don't belong to the House,' he murmured to himself. 'Father has got
a big house somewheres where he'll take me when he comes home, and
everything in that house will belong to me and father--all mine own!'

He reflected for a minute with shining complacency upon this idea.
Then he looked up at the pictures again.

'I'm so glad they're all dead. I shouldn't like to see them going up
and down stairs. I'm sure they'd scold me!'

'Don't you be abusin' your elders, Master Bobby; and liking them dead
be not a right state o' mind at all.'

'But dead people are very happy in heaven. Nurse says so. Wouldn't
you like to be dead, Mr. Jenkins?'

Jenkins put down the glass he was polishing, and pointed sternly to the
door.

'Now you go off, Master Bobby, and don't you be asking imperent
questions.'

Bobby trotted off. There was no love lost between him and Jenkins. He
peeped into the drawing-room, then found his way to the library, and
here he wandered about for some considerable time. The plaster busts
were always a puzzle to him. Why had they no eyes? Were they born
blind? Why had they no bodies? Had their heads been cut off? These
and many other questions he would ask Nobbles, who could only grin at
him by way of reply.

Then he began to pull out some books in the bookcase. He could not
read very well himself, though he spent half an hour with Nurse every
morning over a reading-book. But he loved pictures, and he knew there
were books with pictures in them. Once he had found a wonderful book
here. It was bound in brown leather, and had filigree brass corners
and clasps studded with blue turquoises. He had opened it and found
pictures on