resh pang of
disappointment that he was taking nothing down to the kiddies. Poor
little chaps! It was hard lines on them. Their first words always were
as they ran to greet him, "What have you got for me, daddy?" and he had
nothing. He would have to buy them some sweets at the station. But that
was what he had done for the past four Saturdays; their faces had fallen
last time when they saw the same old boxes produced again.

And Paddy had said, "I had red ribbing on mine bee-fore!"

And Johnny had said, "It's always pink on mine. I hate pink."

But what was William to do? The affair wasn't so easily settled. In the
old days, of course, he would have taken a taxi off to a decent toyshop
and chosen them something in five minutes. But nowadays they had Russian
toys, French toys, Serbian toys--toys from God knows where. It was over
a year since Isabel had scrapped the old donkeys and engines and so on
because they were so "dreadfully sentimental" and "so appallingly bad
for the babies' sense of form."

"It's so important," the new Isabel had explained, "that they should
like the right things from the very beginning. It saves so much time
later on. Really, if the poor pets have to spend their infant years
staring at these horrors, one can imagine them growing up and asking to
be taken to the Royal Academy."

And she spoke as though a visit to the Royal Academy was certain
immediate death to any one...

"Well, I don't know," said William slowly. "When I was their age I used
to go to bed hugging an old towel with a knot in it."

The new Isabel looked at him, her eyes narrowed, her lips apart.

"Dear William! I'm sure you did!" She laughed in the new way.

Sweets it would have to be, however, thought William gloomily, fishing
in his pocket for change for the taxi-man. And he saw the kiddies
handing the boxes round--they were awfully generous little chaps--while
Isabel's precious friends didn't hesitate to help themselves...

What about fruit? William hovered before a stall just inside the
station. What about a melon each? Would they have to share that, too?
Or a pineapple, for Pad, and a melon for Johnny? Isabel's friends could
hardly go sneaking up to the nursery at the children's meal-times. All
the same, as he bought the melon William had a horrible vision of one
of Isabel's young poets lapping up a slice, for some reason, behind the
nursery door.

With his two very awkward parcels he strode off to his train. The