By mutual agreement of the parents the child was never addressed as "Bob" or "Bobby," or by any other diminutive. In their practical opinion a child's name was his name, and ought not to be mauled or dismembered on the pretext of fondness. Similarly, the child had not been baptized after his father, or after any male member of either the Machin or the Cotterill family. Why should family names be perpetuated merely because they were family names? A natural human reaction, this, against the excessive sentimentalism of the Victorian era! "What does 'stamped out' mean?" Robert inquired. Now Robert, among other activities, busied himself in the collection of postage stamps, and in consequence his father's mind, under the impulse of the question, ran immediately to postage stamps. "Stamped out?" said Edward Henry, with the air of omniscience that a father is bound to assume. "Postage stamps are stamped out--by a machine--you see." Robert's scorn of this explanation was manifest. "Well," Edward Henry, piqued, made another attempt, "you stamp a fire out with your feet." And he stamped illustratively on the floor. After all, the child was only eight. "I knew all that before," said Robert, coldly. "You don't understand." "What makes you ask, dear? Let us show father your leg." Nellie's voice was soothing. "Yes," Robert murmured, staring reflectively at the ceiling. "That's it. It says in the _Encyclopaedia_ that hydrophobia is stamped out in this country--by Mr.. Long's muzzling order. Who is Mr.. Long?" A second bomb had fallen on exactly the same spot as the first, and the two exploded simultaneously. And the explosion was none the less terrible because it was silent and invisible. The tidy domestic chamber was strewn in a moment with an awful mass of wounded susceptibilities. Beyond the screen the _nick-nick_ of grandmother's steel needles stopped and started again. It was characteristic of her temperament that she should recover before the younger generations could recover. Edward Henry, as befitted his sex, regained his nerve a little earlier than Nellie. "I told you never to touch my _Encyclopaedia_," said he, sternly. Robert had twice been caught on his stomach on the floor with a vast volume open under his chin, and his studies had been traced by vile thumb-marks. "I know," said Robert. Whenever anybody gave that child a piece of unsolicited information he almost invariably replied, "I know." "But hydrophobia!" cried Nellie. "How did you know about hydrophobia?" "We had it in spellings last week," Robert explained. "The deuce you did!" muttered Edward Henry. The one bright facet of the many-sided and gloomy crisis was the very obvious truth that Robert was the most extraordinary child that ever lived. "But when on earth did you get at the _Encyclopaedia_, Robert?" his mother exclaimed, completely at a loss. "It was before you came in from Hillport," the wondrous infant answered. "After my leg had stopped hurting me a bit."