Jerry looked at him in shocked surprise. 'Why, it's Sunday! And I've learned my hymn--'bout babes an' sucklings an' such is the kingdom of heaven, don't you know. An' I'm not 'llowed to go to church 'cos mum says I'm not normal yet; don't you fink, Mr. Waymond, it's just orful dull of people always twying to be just the same? I like it when mum says I'm feverish. I dweam dweams. Las' night I dweamt there was a weal wow, an' dad made me his galloper, an' I had secwet dispatches. Oh! it was just wippin', I tell you. I think secwet dispatches is--is the loveliest game! 'Cos it's--it's all your own, you know, and nobody, nobody else mustn't have them, or know, not even mum. And you keep 'em quite, quite secwet, an' you don't even know what's inside, yourself; do you? Not if you play it ever, ever so long as I do. And I _did_ it once too, you know, weally; at least I fink I did, though they say I didn't.' The child's eyes were still over bright, his cheeks flushed with the last touches of the sun fever which comes and goes so easily with English children in India; and Jack Raymond smiled softly at the little lad who reminded him so much of his own boyhood, even though the remembrance, at that particular moment, brought a fresh bitterness towards the woman he had just left--the woman who would have liked, as it were, to eat her cake and have it. 'And what are you up to now?' he asked, seating himself on the table and looking down at what lay on it--the outspread map, a paint-box, and a crimson-stained tumbler of water--'spoiling the map of India; eh?' 'I ain't _spoiling_ it,' retorted Jerry indignantly, 'I'm only paintin' it wedder. Mum said I might.' 'I'll tell you what, though, young man! You'll spoil yourself if you suck your paint-brush.' It came out of Jerry's mouth with the usual crimson flag of contrition all over his cheeks. 'It's orful hard to wemember when one is finking-finking of nothin' but the wed, and yet twyin' to play fair.' 'Play fair?' echoed Jack Raymond. 'What game are you playing now, Jerry?' 'Oh! it isn't a game; it's weal. Only, I mean the tiddly little bits'--Jerry, his tongue in his cheek, was laboriously at work again on Rajputana with a brush so surcharged with carmine that it left perfect bloodstains on the general tint of pale yellow--'I don't want, in course, to take more 'n belongs to the Queen, but they mustn't have the teeniest bit of what belongs to us, must they, Mr. Waymond?' 'I see,' replied the man slowly. 'You are painting the town red for Her Majesty--I mean the map.--Isn't it red enough as it is, Jerry?'