"It isn't my business to have a wife," Papa said. "It's my pleasure. My business is to insure ships. And you see me putting up with Mary very well. I suppose she's my own child." "Mark and Dan are your own children first." "_Are_ they? To judge by your infatuation I should have said they weren't. 'Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? Silver bells and cockle shells, and chocolate creams all in a row.'" He took a large, flat box of chocolates out of his pocket and laid it beside her plate. And he looked straight at Mamma again. "If those are the chocolates I reminded you to get for--for the hamper, I won't have them opened." "They are _not_ the chocolates you reminded me to get for--the hamper. I suppose Mark's stomach _is_ a hamper. They are the chocolates I reminded myself to get for Mary." Then Mamma said a peculiar thing. "Are you trying to show me that you're not jealous of Mary?" "I'm not trying to show you anything. You know I'm not jealous of Mary. And you know there's no reason why I should be." "To hear you, Emilius, anybody would think I wasn't fond of my own daughter. Mary darling, you'd better run away." "And Mary darling," he mocked her, "you'd better take your chocolates with you." Mary said: "I don't want any chocolates, Papa." "Is that her contrariness, or just her Mariness?" "Whatever it is it's all the thanks _you_ get, and serve you right, too," said Mamma. She went upstairs to persuade Dan that Papa didn't mean it. It was just his way, and they'd see he would be different to-morrow. But to-morrow and the next day and the next he was the same. He didn't actually send Mark and Dan out of the room again, but he tried to pretend to himself that they weren't there by refusing to speak to them. "Do you think," Mark said, "he'll keep it up till the last minute?" He did; even when he heard the sound of Mr. Parish's wagonette in the road, coming to take Mark and Dan away. They were sitting at breakfast, trying not to look at him for fear they should laugh, or at Mamma for fear they should cry, trying not to look at each other. Catty brought in the cakes, the hot buttered Yorkshire cakes that were never served for breakfast except on Christmas Day and birthdays. Mary wondered whether Papa would say or do anything. He couldn't. Everybody knew those cakes were sacred. Catty set them on the table with a sort of crash and ran out of the room, crying. Mamma's mouth quivered. Papa looked at the cakes; he looked at Mamma; he looked at Mark. Mark was staring at nothing with a firm grin on his face. "The assuagers of grief," Papa said. "Pass round the assuagers." The holy cakes were passed round. Everybody took a piece except Dan. Papa pressed him. "Try an assuager. Do." And Mamma pleaded, "Yes, Dank." "Do you hear what your mother says?" Dan's eyes were red-rimmed. He took a double section of cake and tried to bite his way through.