“Well,” he went on, “I expect they’d like the parks as well as anything.  Suppose we take ’em and show ’em one of the parks?  Shall we?  Besides, they must have fresh air.”

“All right,” Nellie agreed.  “But how far will it be?”

“Oh!” said Edward Henry, “we’ll crowd into a taxi.”

They crowded into a taxi, and the children found their father in high spirits.  Maisie mentioned the doll....  In a minute the taxi had stopped in front of a toy-shop surpassing dreams, and they invaded the toy-shop like an army.  When they emerged, after a considerable interval, nurse was carrying an enormous doll, and Nellie was carrying Maisie, and Ralph was lovingly stroking the doll’s real shoes.  Robert kept a profound silence—­a silence which had begun in the train.

“You haven’t got much to say, Robert,” his father remarked, when the taxi set off again.

“I know,” said Robert, gruffly.  Among other things, he resented his best clothes on a week-day.

“What do you think of London?”

“I don’t know,” said Robert.

His eyes never left the window of the taxi.

Then they visited the theatre—­a very fatiguing enterprise, and also, for Edward Henry, a very nervous one.  He was as awkward in displaying that inchoate theatre as a newly-made father with his first-born.  Pride and shame fought for dominion over him.  Nellie was full of laudations.  Ralph enjoyed the ladders.

“I say,” said Nellie, apprehensive for Maisie, on the pavement, “this child’s exhausted already.  How big’s this park of yours?  Because neither nurse nor I can carry her very far.”

“We’ll buy a pram,” said Edward Henry.  He was staring at a newspaper placard which said:  “Isabel Joy on the war-path again.  Will she win?”

“But—­”

“Oh, yes.  We’ll buy a pram!  Driver—­”

“A pram isn’t enough.  You’ll want coverings for her—­in this wind.”

“Well, we’ll buy the necessary number of eider-downs and blankets, then,” said Edward Henry.  “Driver—­”

A tremendous business!  For in addition to making the purchases he had to feed his flock in an A.B.C. shop, where among the unoccupied waitresses Maisie and her talkative, winking doll enjoyed a triumph.  Still there was plenty of time.

At a quarter past twelve he was displaying the varied landscape beauties of the park to his family.  Ralph insisted on going to the bridge over the lake, and Robert silently backed him.  And therefore the entire party went.  But Maisie was afraid of the water and cried.  Now the worst thing about Maisie was that when once she had begun to cry it was very difficult to stop her.  Even the most remarkable dolls were powerless to appease her distress.

“Give me the confounded pram, nurse,” said Edward Henry.  “I’ll cure her.”

But he did not cure her.  However, he had to stick grimly to the perambulator.  Nellie tripped primly in black silk on one side of it.  Nurse had the wayward Ralph by the hand.  And Robert, taciturn, stalked alone, adding up London and making a very small total of it.