Now Captain Desart, Carrots' father, was, as I think I have told you, a sailor. If any of you children have a sailor for your father, you must not think I mean to teach you to be disrespectful when I say that sailors _are_, there is no doubt, inclined to be hot-tempered and hasty. And I do not think on the whole that they understand much about children, though they are often very fond of them and very kind. All this was the case with Carrots' father. He had been so much away from his children while they were little, that he really hardly knew how they had been brought up or trained or anything about their childish ways--he had left them entirely to his wife, and scarcely considered them as in any way "_his_ business," till they were quite big boys and girls. But once he did begin to notice them, though very kind, he was very strict. He had most decided opinions about the only way of checking their faults whenever these were serious enough to attract his attention, and he could not and would not be troubled with arguing, or what he called "splitting hairs," about such matters. A fault was a fault; telling a falsehood was telling a falsehood; and he made no allowance for the excuses or "palliating circumstances" there might be to consider. One child, according to his ideas, was to be treated exactly like another; why the same offence should deserve severer punishment with a self-willed, self-confident, bold, matter-of-fact lad, such as Maurice, than with a timid, fanciful, baby-like creature as was his little Fabian, he could not have understood had he tried. Nurse knew all this by long experience; no wonder, kind though she knew her master to be, that she trembled when Mott announced his intention of laying the whole affair before his father. But poor Carrots did not know anything about it. "Papa" had never been "cross" to him before, and he was far from clearly understanding why he was "cross" to him now. So he just sobbed and said "I don't know," which was about the worst thing he could possibly have said in his own defence, though literally the truth. "No or yes, sir," said Captain Desart, his voice growing louder and sterner--I think he really forgot that it was a poor little shrimp of six years old he was speaking to--"no nonsense of 'don't knows.' Did you or did you not take nurse's half-sovereign out of her drawer and keep it for your own?" "No," said Carrots, "I never took nucken out of nurse's drawer. I never did, papa, and I didn't know nurse had any sovereigns." "Didn't you know nurse had _lost_ a half-sovereign? Carrots, how can you say so?" interrupted Mott. "Yes, Floss told me," said Carrots. "And Floss hid it away in your paint-box, I suppose?" said Mott, sarcastically. "No, Floss didn't. I hided the sixpenny my own self," said Carrots, looking more and more puzzled. "Hold your tongue, Maurice," said his father, angrily. "Go and fetch the money and the tomfool paint-box thing that you say he had it in."