"You see, it wouldn't make me sorry. And you don't hurt badly. Not half
as much as Joe did. He was mean. He kicked. I wouldn't have stopped, all
the same--if _you_ hadn't come."

The note of reproach was more disconcerting than ever.

"Well, if whacking's no use, what am I to do with you? Shut you up here
till bedtime--eh?"

Roy considered that dismal proposition, with his eyes on the summer
world outside.

"Well--you can if you like. But it wouldn't be fair." A pause. "You
don't know what a horrid boy he was, Daddy. _You'd_ have hit him
harder--even if he _was_ a guest."

"I wonder!" Nevil fatally admitted. "Of course it would all depend on
the provocation."

"What's 'provication'?"

The instant alertness, over a new word, brought back the smile to
Nevil's eyes.

"It means--saying or doing something bad enough to make it right for you
to be angry."

"Well, it was bad enough. It was"--a portentous pause--"about Mummy."

"About Mummy?" The sharp change in his father's tone was at once