"When's that lady coming that gave me my skates at Christmas, and the 'Lives of the Buccaneers'?" "I don't know. I can't say. Some day." Challis has become reserved suddenly. "Give me the little Japanese ash-pan, and find yourself a chair. A strong one, I should recommend." For Bob is at that pleasant growing age that has relapses into babyhood, if not checked by a hint now and then. He accepts the hint this time, but declines the chair, preferring to lean over the back of his father's, and pull his hair. "The mater hates her. I don't." Now, if this had been said immediately, it would have seemed much slighter conversation, easy to pass by. Coming after a good pause of hairpulling, it implied a confidence in the speaker's mind that his hearer's had been dwelling, during that pause, on the person he didn't hate and his mother did. "It's no concern of any young monkey's who his mother hates or doesn't hate." "Well!--it's true. And I say it's a beastly shame. After all, it wasn't _her_ fault that it thawed." "You unblushing young egotist! Is the whole world to be nothing but skates--skates--skates? _Whose_ fault wasn't it? Your mother's?" "No fear! The mater wanted me to chuck it up, and not skate at all. Rather!" This youth's language depends for expression on a tone of overstrained contempt for experience outside his own. But the desert of his egotism has oases. He reaches one now, and says in quite a natural voice: "I say, pap!" "Go on, human creature!" "Shall I tell you what me and Cat...." "What _who_?" This is accompanied by a pantomimic threat of extermination. "Well! Cat and I, then ... what we call her, when we're alone?" "By all means. Only look alive! Because your father's cigar is waning, and copy is behindhand. Go it!" "_We_ call her Judy. Cat and I do. Short for Judith." "You'll make your little sister as bad as yourself, and she's too sharp by half already. How do you know her name's Judith? It might be Sarah--or Euterpe." "But it ain't. It's Judith." "Ah!--but how do you know? That's the point." "Because we listened. And we knew the mater meant _her_." Perhaps if Master Bob had seen his father's face, it would have checked his outflow of virgin candour. But he was behind him, and saw nothing. Challis was balancing a nice question in his mind. Ought he not to check this revelation? Was it not like eavesdropping to listen to it? He decided that he might, as Marianne would surely never say before the children anything she would not wish him to hear. But he wanted to know, too. Still, he was conscious enough of his wish to know, to find it necessary to impute his reluctance to be influenced by it to that mental vice he had invented a name for. "How did you know your mother meant her? How did you know she didn't mean the new cook?" "No fear! _Her_ name's Priscilla. Besides, the mater calls her Steptoe. Besides, Aunt Lotty did it, too." "Did what? What did Aunt Lotty do?"