like a Jack-in-the-Box, The Day itself.

Then the awful thing happened.

Jeremy awoke to the consciousness that something terrific was about
to occur. He lay for a minute thinking--then he was up, running
about the nursery floor as though he were a young man in Mr.
Rossetti's poetry shouting: "Helen! Mary! Mary! Helen! . . . It's
Dick Whittington! Dick Whittington!"

On such occasions he lost entirely his natural reserve and caution.
He dressed with immense speed, as though that would hasten the
coming of the evening. He ran into the nursery, carrying the black
tie that went under his sailor-collar.

He held it out to the Jampot, who eyed him with disfavour. She was
leaving them all in a week and was a strange confusion of sentiment
and bad temper, love and hatred, wounded pride and injured dignity.

"Nurse. Please. Fasten it," he said impatiently.

"And that's not the way to speak, Master Jeremy, and well you know
it," she said. "'Ave you cleaned your teeth?"

"Yes," he answered without hesitation. It was not until the word was
spoken that he realised that he had not. He flushed. The Jampot eyed
him with a sudden sharp suspicion. He was then and ever afterwards a
very bad hand at a lie. . .

He would have taken the word back, he wanted to take it back--but