Wynne passed from the room disturbed by many doubts. To the best of his ability he had proved to his mother that antimacassars in no sense were antimacassars, and, in defiance of his logic, she continued to produce them. Moreover, she had said they were pretty, and they were _not_ pretty—she had said they were antimacassars and they were _not_ antimacassars. Could her word, therefore, be relied upon in other matters? For instance, when she announced at table, “You have had quite enough;” or at night, “It is time to go to bed,” might it not, in reality, be an occasion for a “second helping” or another hour at play? It was reasonable to suppose so. He decided it would be expedient to keep his eyes open and watch the habits of grown-ups more closely in the future. V The next serious impression on Wynne’s susceptible brain was the discovery of routine, and he conceived for it an instant dislike. To him it appeared a grievous state of affairs that nearly all matters were guided by the clock rather than by circumstance. One had one’s breakfast not because one was hungry, but because it was half-past eight, and so on with a mass of other details, great and small, throughout the day. That people should wilfully enslave themselves to a mere mechanical contrivance, instead of rising superior to the calls of time and place, was incomprehensible to Wynne. He could not appreciate how regularity and repetition in any sense benefited the individual. He observed how a breakdown in the time-table of events was a sure signal for high words from his father, and an aggravated sense of calamity which ran through every department of the house. True, a late breakfast presaged the loss of a train, and so much time less at the office, but surely this was no matter for melancholy? It argued a poor spirit that could not rejoice at an extra quarter of an hour in bed, or delaying the pursuit of irksome duties. Wynne had never seen his father’s office, but at the age of seven he had already formed very pronounced and unfavourable views regarding it. To his mind the office and the City were one—a place which swallowed up mankind in the morning and disgorged them at night. The process of digestion through which they appeared to have passed produced characteristics of a distressing order. A child judges men by his father, and women by his mother. From this standard Wynne judged that men might be tolerable were it not for the City. The City was responsible for his father’s ill-humours at night—the city inspired home criticism and such observations as: “I come back tired out and find——” etc. Wynne had a very wholesome distaste for recurrent sentiments; he liked people to say new things that were interesting. The repetition of ready-made phrases was lazy and dull—the very routine of speech. It were better, surely, to say nothing at all than have catch-phrases for ever on one’s lips.