Christopher, feeling himself thus attired, and receiving the silent approval of his glass, stole downstairs in a very clever way, and took from his own private cupboard a whip of white pellucid whalebone, silver-mounted, and set with a large and radiant Cairngorm pebble. His mother had given him this on his very last birth-day, and he had never used it, wisely fearing to be laughed at. But now he tucked it under his arm, and swaggering as he had seen hussars do, turned into a passage leading to his private outlet. Hugging himself upon all his skill, and feeling assured of grand success, Kit allowed his heels to clank, and carried his head with an arrogant twist. And so, near a window, where good light came in large quantity from the garden, he marched into his mother's arms. "Kit!" cried his mother; and he said, "Yes," being unable to deny that truth. His mother looked at him, and his jaunty whip, and particularly lively suit of clothes; and she knew that he had been telling lies to her by the hundred or the bushel; and she would have been very glad to scorn him, if she could have helped being proud of him. Kit was unable to carry on any more in the way of falsehood. He tried to look fierce, but his mother laughed; and he saw that he must knock under. "My dear boy," she said, for the moment daring to follow up her triumph, "is this the costume in which you go forth to fish in the most outlandish places, with the yellow ooze above your knees? And is that your fishing-rod? Oh, Kit!--come, Kit, now you are caught at last!" "My dear mother, I have told you stories; but I will leave off at last. Now there is not one instant to explain. I have not so much as a moment to spare. If you only could guess how important it is, you would draw in your cloak in a moment. You never shall know another single word, unless you have the manners, mother, to pull in your cloak and let me go by." "Kit, you may go. When you look at me like that, you may as well do anything. You have gone by your mother for ever so long; or at any rate gone away from her." With these words, Mrs. Sharp made way for her son to pass her; and Kit, in a reckless manner, was going to take advantage of it; then he turned back his face, to say goodbye, and his mother's eyes were away from him. She could not look at him, because she knew that her look would pain him; but she held out her hand; and he took it and kissed it; and then he made off as hard as he could go. Mrs. Sharp turned back, and showed some hankering to run after him; and then she remembered what a laugh would arise in Cross Duck Lane to see such sport; and so she sighed a heavy sigh--knowing how long she must have to wait--and retired to her own thoughtful corner, with no heart left for shopping.