This was disconcerting; but Nevil held his ground.
"Then I suppose I've got to whack you. If boys aren't sorry for their sins, it's the only way."
"You better not," he said with the same impersonal air of conviction. "You see, it wouldn't make me sorry. And you don't hurt badly. Not half as much as Joe did. He was mean. He kicked. I wouldn't have stopped, all the same--if _you_ hadn't come."
The note of reproach was more disconcerting than ever.
"Well, if whacking's no use, what am I to do with you? Shut you up here till bedtime--eh?"
Roy considered that dismal proposition, with his eyes on the summer world outside.
"Well--you can if you like. But it wouldn't be fair." A pause. "You don't know what a horrid boy he was, Daddy. _You'd_ have hit him harder--even if he _was_ a guest."
"I wonder!" Nevil fatally admitted. "Of course it would all depend on the provocation."
The instant alertness, over a new word, brought back the smile to Nevil's eyes.
"It means--saying or doing something bad enough to make it right for you to be angry."
"Well, it was bad enough. It was"--a portentous pause--"about Mummy."
"About Mummy?" The sharp change in his father's tone was at once startling and comforting. "Look here, Roy. No more mysteries. This is my affair as much as yours. Come here."
Pulling a bedside chair near the window, he sat down and drew Roy close to him, taking his shoulders between his hands.
"Now then, old boy, tell me just exactly what happened--as man to man."
The appeal was irresistible. But--how could he----? The very change in his father's manner made the telling at once more difficult and more urgent.
"Daddy--it hurts too much. I don't know how to say it----" he faltered, and the blood tingled in his cheeks.
If Nevil Sinclair was not a stern father, neither was he a very demonstrative one. Even his closest relations were tinged with something of the artist's detachment, and innate respect for the individual even in embryo. But at sight of Roy's distress and delicacy of feeling, his heart melted in him. Without a word, he slipped an arm round the boy's shoulder and drew him closer still.
"That better, eh? You've got to pull it through, somehow," he said gently, so holding him that Roy could, if he chose, nestle against him. He did choose. It might be babyish; but he hated telling: and it was a wee bit easier with his face hidden. So, in broken phrases and in a small voice that quivered with anger revived--he told.