t. Seventy-eight hours,
and Sunday twice as long as the other days, and that made thirteen more;
ninety-one, said Helen, her nose in the air.

The week dragged along, very difficult work for everybody, and even
Hamlet felt the excitement and watched his corner with the Jampot's
sewing machine in it with more quivering intensity than ever. The Day
Before The Day arrived, the evening before The Day, the last supper
before The Day, the last bed before The Day... Suddenly, 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
something held him as though a stronger than he had placed his hand over
his mouth. His face flamed.

"You've truly cleaned them?" she said.

"Yes, truly," he answered, his eyes on the ground. Never was there a
more obvious liar in all the world.

She said no more; he moved to the fireplace. His joy was gone. There
was a cold clammy sensation about his heart. Slowly, very slowly, the
consciousness stole upon him that he was a liar. He had not thought it a
lie when he had first spoken, now he knew.

Still there was time. Had he turned round and spoken, all might still
have been well. But now obstinacy held him. He was not going to give the
Jampot an opportunity for triumphing over him. After