He timed his return with exactitude, and, going straight upstairs to the chamber known indifferently as “Maisie’s room” or “nurse’s room,” sure enough he found the three children there alone!  They were fed, washed, night-gowned and even dressing-gowned; and this was the hour when, while nurse repaired the consequences of their revolutionary conduct in the bathroom and other places, they were left to themselves.  Robert lay on the hearthrug, the insteps of his soft pink feet rubbing idly against the pile of the rug, his elbows digging into the pile, his chin on his fists, and a book perpendicularly beneath his eyes.  Ralph, careless adventurer rather than student, had climbed to the glittering brass rail of Maisie’s new bedstead and was thereon imitating a recently-seen circus performance.  Maisie, in the bed according to regulation, and lying on the flat of her back, was singing nonchalantly to the ceiling.  Carlo, unaware that at that moment he might have been a buried corpse but for the benignancy of Providence in his behalf, was feeling sympathetic towards himself because he was slightly bored.

“Hello, kids!” Edward Henry greeted them.  As he had seen them before mid-day dinner, the more formal ceremonies of salutation after absence—­so hateful to the Five Towns temperament—­were happily over and done with.

Robert turned his head slightly, inspected his father with a judicial detachment that hardly escaped the inimical, and then resumed his book.

("No one would think,” said Edward Henry to himself, “that the person who has just entered this room is the most enterprising and enlightened of West End theatrical managers.”)

“’Ello, father!” shrilled Ralph.  “Come and help me to stand on this wire-rope.”

“It isn’t a wire-rope,” said Robert from the hearthrug, without stirring, “it’s a brass-rail.”

“Yes, it is a wire-rope, because I can make it bend,” Ralph retorted, bumping down on the thing.  “Anyhow, it’s going to be a wire-rope.”

Maisie simply stuck several fingers into her mouth, shifted to one side, and smiled at her father in a style of heavenly and mischievous flirtatiousness.

“Well, Robert, what are you reading?” Edward Henry inquired, in his best fatherly manner—­half authoritative and half humorous—­while he formed part of the staff of Ralph’s circus.

“I’m not reading—­I’m learning my spellings,” replied Robert.

Edward Henry, knowing that the discipline of filial politeness must be maintained, said, “’Learning my spellings’—­what?”

“Learning my spellings, father,” Robert consented to say, but with a savage air of giving way to the unreasonable demands of affected fools.  Why indeed should it be necessary in conversation always to end one’s sentence with the name or title of the person addressed?

“Well, would you like to go to London with me?”

“When?” the boy demanded cautiously.  He still did not move, but his ears seemed to prick up.