When Elsa had cleared away Mr. Wycherly’s breakfast, he found it unusually difficult to concentrate his mind upon his great work dealing with Aristotle’s Nikomachean Ethics. Like Miss Esperance, he had had very little breakfast. Two rashers of bacon had Elsa provided, and the usual four pieces of toast. Each little boy had had a rasher. Edmund had eaten three pieces of toast and Montagu the fourth. Edmund also drank all the milk that he did not spill. Mr. Wycherly was fain to content himself with a cup of exceedingly black tea, and one small piece of bread. But he was quite unconscious that he had eaten less than usual. So shaken was he out of his customary dreamy calm that he decided to go for a walk. He did not confess to himself that he hoped he might meet the children while he was out. *CHAPTER III* *THE EDUCATION OF MR. WYCHERLY* For what are all our contrivings, And the wisdom of our books, When compared with your caresses, And the gladness of your looks? LONGFELLOW. For several days Mr. Wycherly’s privacy was not again invaded before breakfast, though he heard through the wall continual and loudly expressed demands to visit "man" from his friend of the curly pate and strap shoes. One morning, however, Robina’s suspicions as to Edmund’s propensity for roving were lulled into security by particularly exemplary conduct on his part during the time of dressing; and she slipped downstairs to give a hand with the breakfast, leaving the children safety shut in their nursery. No sooner had she departed than Montagu, of whom people expected better things, suggested that they should go and visit Mr. Wycherly next door. The morning hours had been so unusually quiet that that gentleman was still dozing, although Elsa had already brought his hot water. When he heard the now unmistakable fumbling with the door handle, which always proclaimed the advent of the children, he called out—"Come in, but for heaven’s sake mind the hot-water can." In they came without accident of any kind, as Elsa had taken the precaution of placing the can well on the hinge side of the door. Very fresh and spick and span did the two little boys look in clean, blue pinafores, and shining morning faces. Edmund made a dash for Mr. Wycherly, with his usual joyful cry of "Uppee! Uppee!" Montagu hastily banged the door after him to keep Robina out, and he, too, climbed up on Mr. Wycherly’s bed. The soft, indescribable fragrance of clean children was supremely pleasurable to Mr. Wycherly, and excited strange, unfamiliar stirrings of recollections, long buried but by no means dead, of his own nursery days in the old house in Shropshire where he and his brothers were brought up. But there was no time to indulge in retrospect, for Edmund had already settled the programme. "Sing!" he commanded. "Sing, man!"