His mother did not answer, and to the child such silence seemed charged with chilly omen. He did not ask her, as he longed to do, what she exactly meant by a stainless gentleman. He was sure that in some incomprehensible fashion the stainlessness of great-Uncle Ambrose reflected unfavourably upon his father and resented it accordingly. He was also sure that this enviable quality had nothing to do with personal cleanliness, for there was no one in the whole world so clean and smart as father. Why, when he drove to a distant meet, he wore "two pinafores," one in front and one behind, to keep his leathers spotlessly white; the said pinafores, by the way, doing much towards reconciling Roger to the wearing of his bib at meals. The nursery window was open and the soft spring rain whispered pleasant things to the grass; but Roger did not listen. For the first time in his life he was weighing evidence; and the worst of it was, that, do as he would, the bulk of the evidence all went into one scale. "They’re just as fond of _me_," he thought to himself, "but somehow they’re never with me together." There were no jolly drives into the town now—those drives in the high dog-cart when he would sit between them rapturously thinking that never had little boy such resplendent parents. Now, mother always went in the "bucket" with his little sisters, and when father took him out driving, mother did not even come and stand on the steps to wave them a farewell. She never sat on father’s knee now, or called him a "ridiculous boy," or untied his necktie, or rumpled his hair. She seemed always to sit as far off as possible, and when she did look at her big, jolly husband, there was that in her expression which Roger felt he would rather not understand. The truth was that Roger the elder and Lettice his wife, having been at one time rather demonstratively fond of one another, found it somewhat difficult to keep up appearances since such time as began the state of affairs their little son so deprecated. Lettice certainly flattered herself upon the secrecy and dignity with which she attended to the linen less well-bred people will sometimes insist upon hanging up to the public gaze even before it has gone through the cleansing process, and was quite unconscious that all the while her servants discussed the affair exhaustively, her friends pronounced the position untenable, and her little son grieved and wondered, casting about in his child mind for some way of clearing an atmosphere which even he felt was so charged with electricity as to be well-nigh intolerable.