Opening the nursery door she paused upon the threshold with a little “Oh!” of surprise. There was a reek of cigar smoke; its origin between the lips of a burly young man who stood drumming a tune upon the window-pane.
Mr. Bob Chater turned at her entry. “I've been waiting for you a long time,” he said.
She asked, “Whatever for?” and in her tone there was a chill.
“Didn't I tell you yesterday that I was coming to see the kids tubbed?”
Mr. Bob Chater laughed. “Well, now you see that I did. I've been looking forward to this all day.”
Plainly she was perturbed. She said: “Mr. Chater, I really would rather you did not, if you don't mind.”
“Well, but I do mind, d'you see? I mind very much indeed. It would be the bitterest disappointment.”
His playfulness sat ill upon him. This was a stout young man, black-eyed, dark-moustached, with a thick and heavy look about him.
She would not catch his mood. “I am sure when I ask you--”
“Well, you're jolly well wrong, you know,” he laughed; “'cause I ain't going.”
Mary flushed slightly; moved to the hearthrug where sat David and Angela, her small charges, watching, from their toys, the scene.
It occurred to Mr. Bob Chater that she was annoyed.
“I say, be decent to a fellow, Miss Humfray,” he said. “Look here, I hadn't seen the kids for two years when I came back yesterday. They hardly remember their kind big brother.” He addressed the small girl whose round eyes, moving from speaker to speaker since Mary had entered, were now upon him. “Do you, Angela?” he asked.
“I--hate--you,” Angela told him, in the slow utterance of one giving completest effect to a carefully weighed sentiment.
With equal impressiveness, David, seated beside her, lent his authority to the statement. “I--hate--you--too,” he joined.
Mr. Bob Chater laughed a little stupidly.
Mary cried: “Oh, Angela! Oh, David! How can you speak like that!”
“He is perfectly abom'able,” Angela said, unmoved. “He made Davie cry. He trod on Davie's beetle.”
The cracked corpse of a mechanical beetle, joy of David's heart, was produced in evidence; its distressed owner reddening ominously at this renewed recollection of the calamity.
Mary took the sad pieces tenderly. “Silly children! He never meant to break it. Oh, such silly children!”