"So I have, but he gets out again, and nurse can't hold him in all the time. Besides, it was Mrs. Woodward's fault for being so disagreeable about my system; but the children were naughty, poor dears; only, of course, Adam and Eve went to bed when they were told--you see, they are _reasonable_, and knew that if they _did_ they would be allowed to come down again to dessert--and then they didn't really mind going to bed to please me, the little dears. But Blasius actually slapped Mrs. Woodward's face, and then she said he ought to be whipped. So we had quite a discussion about it, and, in the heat of the moment, I told Blasius he must stop in bed till he said he was sorry. And now I can't make him stop in bed or say a word. He just sits and smiles." Here their mother's tone became so unlike smiles that Adam and Eve, from their little beds, begged their ducksom mummie not to cry, even though Blazes was the baddest little boy _they_ had ever seen. "If he won't say it, you can't make him," remarked Lord George aside, with conviction. "If I were you I'd chance it." "But I can't. You see, I told Mrs. Woodward I could manage my own children, and so I've made quite a point of it with Blasius. I can't give in." Lord George, who was in the Foreign Office, and great on diplomatic relations, whistled softly. "Always a mistake to claim when you can't coerce--or retaliate." Then he added, as if a thought had struck him, "Look here! has he had his tea? No! then hand him over to me; I'll put him in the little room by the business room. Nobody will hear him there even if he does howl, and as he gets hungry he will cave in, I expect. At any rate, he can't get out of bed there, and I don't think he can like it." But for some unexplained reason, possibly original sin, Blasius elected to be quite cheerful over the transfer. He informed the nurse, as she put on his dressing-gown, that he was going to "'moke with daddy," and when he reached the little bare room, which was almost a closet, he tucked the same dressing-gown round his little legs very carefully as he plumped down on the floor. "Blazeth's goin' to stay here a long, long time," he said, confidently. "Dood-night, daddy dear." In fact, he was so quiet that more than once his father, smoking in the next room, got up to open the door softly and peer in to see if by chance any evil could have befallen the small rebel; only to retire finally, quite discomforted by the superior remark that "when Blazeth's horry Blazeth's 'll let daddy know." To retire and meditate upon the mysterious problem of fatherhood, and that duty to the soul which, somehow or another, you have beckoned out of the unknown. In nine times out of ten, thoughtlessly, to suit your own pleasure; in ninety-nine times out of a hundred to bring it up to suit your own convenience, to minister to your amusement, to justify your theories.