I do believe that that was the first time in my life I was ever really taken by surprise. I'm not the sort of person that's easily amazed. Always expecting the unexpected I get used to meeting it when it comes. But that time it had me fair. As we stared at each other I don't know which of the two was the more astonished. But he's a spry kid, is Jimmy. He knows his father when he sees him. And when he had got it clear that it was me, he came at me with a run. 'Dad!' he cried. 'Dad!' Now I was in a quandary. I was getting into the region of the unusual. I wanted to put my arms about that boy, lift him on to my knee, and say, 'Hollo, Jimmy!' But if I went on like that, the show'd be busted. He'd go about telling people that I was his father. One of his father's two thousand and forty-five names was Montagu Babbacombe. I'd faced it out that I wasn't acquainted with any party of that name; supposing, when I said so, that I'd counted the cost. But this was an item which hadn't figured in the bill as I'd got it down at all. If I wasn't careful the Marquis would have to walk downstairs. So I kind of compromised. 'Little boy, whose little boy are you?' 'I'm your little boy--yours! yours! yours!' He put his hands on my knees, and began to caper about as if he was happy. Now I'd been in the habit of playing with that small child a kind of a game in which I'd ask him whose little boy he was, pretending I didn't know; and he'd say, 'Yours! yours! yours!' He thought I was playing that game with him then. Which was where he was wrong. 'You take a good deal for granted, young gentleman.' 'I don't! I don't! I don't!' He flung himself against me, still thinking I was playing the game. 'I say you do. May I ask how you've come here!' 'I came with Pollie.' Before I could stop him or guessed what he was going to do, he was off to the door, which he had left wide open, and had started to bawl,' Pollie! Pollie! Here's dad! Here's dad!' Children have a pleasant habit of bawling. But I don't think I was ever so struck by it as I was then. I was after him like a shot. 'Here, I say. You mustn't make that noise!' I might as well have talked to the wall. When he'd got a thing to mention he was bound to mention it--at the top of his voice. 'I'm playing hide-and-seek with Pollie, and she won't know where I am. Pollie! Pollie! Here's dad!' I had to throw him up in the air before he'd stop. By then it was too late. Tearing down the stairs came Pollie, my heart in my mouth for fear she'd tumble, and if I'd shut the door in her face she'd have dashed herself against it. I had to let her in, and shut the door behind her when she was in, and hope that there was nobody about with long ears and sharp wits. 'Allow me to ask what you young persons mean by behaving in this extraordinary manner; for whom do you take me?' 'You're dad! dad! dad!'