gradation. What
must this world be that it could change itself so instantly from a place
of gay and happy pleasure into a dim groping room of punishment and
dismay?

His feelings were utterly confused. He supposed that he was terribly
wicked. But he did not feel wicked. He only felt miserable, sick and
defiant. Mary and Helen came in, their eyes open to a crisis, their
bodies tuned sympathetically to the atmosphere of sin and crime that
they discerned around them.

Then Mr. Cole came in as was his daily habit--for a moment before his
breakfast.

"Well, here are you all," he cried. "Ready for to-night? No breakfast
yet? Why, now...?"

Then perceiving, as all practised fathers instantly must, that the
atmosphere was sinful, he changed his voice to that of the Children's
Sunday Afternoon Service--a voice well known in his family.

"Please, sir," began the Jampot, "I'm sorry to 'ave to tell you, sir,
that Master Jeremy's not been at all good this morning."

"Well, Jeremy," he said, turning to his son, "what is it?"

Jeremy's face, raised to his father's, was hard and set and sullen.

"I've told a lie," he said; "I said I'd cleaned my teeth when I hadn't.
Nurse went and looked, and then I called her a beastly woman."

The Jampot's face expressed a grieved and at the same time triumphant
confirmation of this.

"You told a lie?" Mr. Cole's voice was full of a lingering sorrow.

"Yes," said Jeremy.

"Are you sorry?"

"I'm sorry that I told a lie, but I'm not sorry I called Nurse a beastly
woman."

"Jeremy!"

"No, I'm not. She is a beastly woman."

Mr. Cole was always at a loss when anyone defied him, even though it
were only a small boy of eight. He took refuge now in his ecclesiastical
and parental authority.

"I'm very distressed--very distressed indeed. I hope that punishment,
Jeremy, will show you how wrong you have been. I'm afraid you cannot
come with us to the Pantomime to-night."

At that judgement a quiver for an instant held Jeremy's face, turning
it, for that moment, into something shapeless and old. His heart had
given a wild leap of terror and dismay. But he showed no further sign.
He simply stood there waiting.

Mr. Cole was baffled, as he always was by Jeremy's moods, so he
continued:

"And until you've apologised to Nurse for your rudeness you must remain
by yourself. I shall forbid your sisters to speak to you. Mary and
Helen, you are not to speak to your brother until he has apologi