When the consciousness of the unruly in these “high jinks” becomes distinct and begins to be oppressive, the laughter will be less boisterous and express more of playful pretence. The child learns to be satisfied with making a feint to rebel, with a make-believe unruliness. Ruth, on the 236th day, laughed when pretending to disobey by biting off the petals of flowers, and on the 455th day, by stuffing buttons into her mouth. The boy C., when about the same age, had his little way of turning disobedience into a game. In the seventeenth month, when he was bidden by his mother to give up a picture he had got possession of, he walked up to her and made a show of handing over his unlawful possession, and then drew his hands back with much laughing enjoyment. A more complicated psychical attitude appears when such laughing pretence at disobedience takes on a “roguish” aspect. Here we have, not only an element of slight uneasiness, but one of self-consciousness, which together give a distinct complexion to the whole mental attitude and to its expression. This ingredient of a timid self-consciousness or shyness under the scrutiny of others appears, as we know, some time after the simpler forms of fear. In Ruth’s case it seems to have showed itself on the 123rd day in a distinctly “roguish” attitude. When at dinner and spoken to by her grandfather, she turned her head as far as she could. On the 141st day, too, when held in her nurse’s arms, she {206} smiled at her grandfather and others and then ducked her head. This expression of roguish self-consciousness had more of the look of a nervous explosion in the eleventh month, when the girl laughed on being set on her feet in a corner where she was much noticed; and again, in the thirteenth month, as she tumbled about and showed herself off. This laughter, with something of the _gêne_ of self-consciousness in it, was, we are told, not to be confounded with the expression of a complacent self-consciousness. The element of an awkward shyness comes into much of the early playful “trying it on”. In the case of the boy C., just mentioned, it was seen in the sly, upward look of the eyes and the short, half-nervous laugh, when he was face to face with authority and disposed to play at disobedience. The fuller roguish laugh occurs frequently along with a risky bit of play, as when a boy of one and a half year would point to himself when asked for a finger-recognition of somebody else. In such cases the laughter seems like an attempt to get rid of the element of risk. When the masking of the impulse of fun by timidity is greater, the expression reaching only to a tentative smile, the roguishness of a child may easily wear a look of kinship with our grown-up humour.[130]