Mary Olivier: a Life. Sinclair May

and Dan out of the room. You couldn't think why he had done it this time unless it was because Mark laughed when Roddy said in his proud, dignified voice, "I'll have a little piece of the Virgin's womb, please, first." Or it may have been because of Mark's pudding. He never liked it when they had Mark's pudding. Anyhow, Mark and Dan had to go, and as they went he drew Mary's chair closer to him and heaped her plate with cream and jam, looking very straight at Mamma as he did it.

      "You might have left them alone," Mamma said, "on their last Sunday. They won't be here to annoy you so very long."

      Papa said, "There are three days yet till the thirteenth."

      "Three days! You'll count the hours and the minutes till you've got what you want."

      "What I want is peace and quiet in my house and to get a word in edgeways, sometimes, with my own wife."

      "You've no business to have a wife if you can't put up with your own children."

      "It isn't my business to have a wife," Papa said. "It's my pleasure. My business is to insure ships. And you see me putting up with Mary very well. I suppose she's my own child."

      "Mark and Dan are your own children first."

      "Are they? To judge by your infatuation I should have said they weren't. 'Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? Silver bells and cockle shells, and chocolate creams all in a row.'"

      He took a large, flat box of chocolates out of his pocket and laid it beside her plate. And he looked straight at Mamma again.

      "If those are the chocolates I reminded you to get for—for the hamper, I won't have them opened."

      "They are not the chocolates you reminded me to get for—the hamper. I suppose Mark's stomach is a hamper. They are the chocolates I reminded myself to get for Mary."

      Then Mamma said a peculiar thing.

      "Are you trying to show me that you're not jealous of Mary?"

      "I'm not trying to show you anything. You know I'm not jealous of Mary.

       And you know there's no reason why I should be."

      "To hear you, Emilius, anybody would think I wasn't fond of my own daughter. Mary darling, you'd better run away."

      "And Mary darling," he mocked her, "you'd better take your chocolates with you."

      Mary said: "I don't want any chocolates, Papa."

      "Is that her contrariness, or just her Mariness?"

      "Whatever it is it's all the thanks you get, and serve you right, too," said Mamma.

      She went upstairs to persuade Dan that Papa didn't mean it. It was just his way, and they'd see he would be different to-morrow.

      But to-morrow and the next day and the next he was the same. He didn't actually send Mark and Dan out of the room again, but he tried to pretend to himself that they weren't there by refusing to speak to them.

      "Do you think," Mark said, "he'll keep it up till the last minute?"

      He did; even when he heard the sound of Mr. Parish's wagonette in the road, coming to take Mark and Dan away. They were sitting at breakfast, trying not to look at him for fear they should laugh, or at Mamma for fear they should cry, trying not to look at each other. Catty brought in the cakes, the hot buttered Yorkshire cakes that were never served for breakfast except on Christmas Day and birthdays. Mary wondered whether Papa would say or do anything. He couldn't. Everybody knew those cakes were sacred. Catty set them on the table with a sort of crash and ran out of the room, crying. Mamma's mouth quivered.