'Because they like it, I suppose.'
'Why do they like it?'
'Goodness knows.'
'Does mummy like it?'
'I suppose so.'
'Does mummy eat too much?'
'She doesn't. The others do.'
'Why?'
William Bannister's thirst for knowledge was at this time perhaps his
most marked characteristic. No encyclopaedia could have coped with it.
Kirk was accustomed to do his best, cheerfully yielding up what little
information on general subjects he happened to possess, but he was like
Mrs. Partington sweeping back the Atlantic Ocean with her broom.
'Because they've been raised that way,' he replied to the last
question. 'Bill, old man, when you grow up, don't you ever become one
of these fellows who can't walk two blocks without stopping three times
to catch up with their breath. If you get like that mutt Dana Ferris
you'll break my heart. And you're heading that way, poor kid.'
'What's Ferris?'
'He's a man I met at dinner the other night. When he was your age he
was the richest child in America, and everybody fussed over him till he
grew up into a wretched little creature with a black moustache and two
chins. You ought to see him. He would make you laugh; and you don't get
much to laugh at nowadays. I guess it isn't hygienic for a kid to
laugh. Bill, honestly, what do you think of things? Don't you
ever want to hurl one of those sterilized bricks of yours at a certain
lady? Or has she taken all the heart out of you by this time?'
This was beyond Bill, as Kirk's monologues frequently were. He changed
the subject.
'I wish I had a cat,' he said, by way of starting a new topic.
'Well, why haven't you a cat? Why haven't you a dozen cats if you want
them?'
'I asked Aunty Lora could I have a cat, and she said: 'Certainly not,
cats are...cats are......'
'Unhygienic?'
'What's that?'
'It's what your Aunt Lora might think a cat was. Or did she say
pestilential?'
'I don't amember.'
'But she wouldn't let you have one?'
'Mamie said a cat might scratch me.'
'Well, you wouldn't mind that?' said Kirk anxiously.
He had come to be almost morbidly on the look-out for evidence which
might go to prove that this cotton-wool existence was stealing from the
child the birthright of courage which was his from both his parents.
Much often depends on little things, and, if Bill had replied in the
affirmative to the question, it would probably have had the result of
sending Kirk there and then raging through the house conducting a sort
of War of Independence.
The only thing that had kept him from doing so before was the
