"Hello, kids!" Edward Henry greeted them. As he had seen them before midday 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 hearth-rug, 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.
"No thanks ... Father." His ears ceased their activity.
"Because there's a spellings examination on Friday, and I'm going to be top boy."
It was a fact that the infant (whose programmes were always somehow arranged in advance, and were in his mind absolutely unalterable) could spell the most obstreperous words. Quite conceivably he could spell better than his father, who still showed an occasional tendency to write "separate" with three e's and only one a.