Boodles slipped her arm about his neck and patted his white whiskers. The paper-boat was a heap of pulp by this time.
"Now it's my turn," she said gaily. "Let Boodles preach, and let old men be silent. Dear old thing, there are lots of queer puzzles, and I'm sure it is best to leave them all alone. 'Let 'em bide,' as Mary would say. We can't know much, and it's no use trying. You might as well worry your dear white head about the queer thing called eternity. You start, and you go round, and then you go round again faster until you begin to whirl, and you see stars, and your head aches--that's as far as you can ever get when you think about queer puzzles. And that's all I've got to say. Don't you think it rather a good sermon for a babe and suckling?"
"It's no use. She doesn't see what I'm driving at," muttered poor old Weevil.
"My hair is nearly dry. I think I'll go and do it up now," said Boodles. "I'm going to wear my white muslin. Shan't I look nice?"
"She doesn't know why she looks nice," murmured the silly old man. "It is Nature's cruel trick to make her attract young men. Just as the flowers are given sweetness to attract the fertilising bee. There it is again--no fixed law. Every sweet flower attracts its bees, but it is not every sweet girl who may."
"What's all that about bees?" laughed Boodles. "Oh, I forgot! I'm not to laugh."
"Boodle-oodle, do try and take things seriously. Do try and remember," he pleaded.
"But I'm not going to be grumpy until I have to," she said. "It would be such nonsense. I expect there will be lots of worries later on. I must be happy while I can. Girls ought not to be told anything about unhappiness until they are twenty. There ought to be a law made to punish any one who made a little girl grumpy. If there was you would go to prison, old man."
"You must think, Boodles. We are putting it off too long--the question of your future," he said blunderingly. Now he had got at the subject! "I am getting old, I have only an annuity, and there will be nothing for you when I die. I do not know what I shall do without you, but I must send you away, and have you trained for a nurse, or something of the kind. It will be bad to be alone again, with the Brute waiting for me at every corner, but worse to think of you left unprovided for."