'It isn't anything. It wasn't my fault. It was her fault. Madame Frabelle said _she_ would teach me to take away her mandolin and use it for a cricket bat. She needn't teach me; I know already.' 'Now, Archie, you know perfectly well you've no right to go into her room when she isn't there.' 'How can I go in when she is there?... She won't let me. Besides, I don't want to.' 'It isn't nice of you; you ought not to go into her room without her permission.' 'It isn't her room; it's your room. At least, it's the spare room.' 'Have you done any harm to the mandolin?' He paused a little, as he often did before answering, as if in absence of mind, and then said, as though starting up from a reverie: 'Er--no. No harm.' 'Well, what have you done?' 'I can mend it,' he answered. 'Madame Frabelle has been very kind to you, Archie. I'm sorry you're not behaving nicely to a guest in your mother's house. It isn't the act of a gentleman.' 'Oh. Well, there are a great many things in her room, Mother; some of them are rather jolly.' 'Go and say you're sorry, Archie. And you mustn't do it again.' 'Will it be the act of a gentleman to say I'm sorry? It'll be the act of a story-teller, you know.' 'What! Aren't you sorry to have bothered her?' 'I'm sorry she found it out,' he said, as he turned to the door. 'These perpetual scenes and quarrels between my son and my guest are most painful to me,' Edith said, with assumed solemnity. He looked grave. 'Well, she needn't have quarrelled.' 'But isn't she very kind to you?' 'Yes, she isn't bad sometimes. I like it when she tells me lies about what her husband used to do--I mean stories. She's not a bad sort.... Is she a homeless refugette, Mother?' 'Not exactly that. She's a widow, and she's staying with us, and we must be nice to her. Now, you won't forget again, will you?' 'Right. But I can mend it.' 'I think I'd better go up and see her,' said Edith. Archie politely opened the door for his mother. 'I shouldn't, if I were you,' he said. Edith slowly went back to the fire. 'Well, I'll leave her a little while, perhaps. Now do go and do something useful.' 'What, useful? Gracious! I haven't got much more of my holidays, Mother.' 'That's no reason why you should spend your time in worrying everybody, and smashing the musical instruments of guests that are under your roof.' He looked up at the ceiling and smiled, as if pleased at this way of putting it. 'I suppose she's very glad to have a roof to her mouth--I mean to her head,' he hurriedly corrected. 'But, Mother, she isn't poor. She has an amber necklace. Besides, she gave Dilly sixpence the other day for not being frightened of a cow. If she can afford to give a little girl sixpence for every animal she says she isn't afraid of!'... 'That only proves she's kind. And I didn't say she was poor; that's not the point. We must be nice and considerate to anyone staying with us--don't you see?' He became absent-minded again for a minute.