went on stabbing him, Nicky did
his best to explain.

"You see, I never know whether it's aching or whether it's only going to
ache. It began a little, teeny bit when the Funny Man made me laugh.
And I didn't see the Magic Lantern, and I didn't have any of Rosalind's
cake. It came on when I was biting the sugar off. And it was aching in
both ears at once. It was," said Nicky, "a jolly sell for me."

At that moment Nicky's earache jabbed upwards at his eyelids and cut
them, and shook tears out of them. But Nicky's mouth refused to take any
part in the performance, though he let his father carry him upstairs.
And, as he lay on the big bed in his mother's room, he said he thought
he could bear it if he had Jane-Pussy to lie beside him, and his
steam-engine.

Anthony went back into the garden to fetch Jane. He spent an hour
looking for her, wandering in utter misery through the house and through
the courtyard and stables and the kitchen garden. He looked for Jane in
the hothouse and the cucumber frames, and under the rhubarb, and on the
scullery roof, and in the water butt. It was just possible that on a day
of complete calamity Jane should have slithered off the scullery roof
into the water-butt. The least he could do was to find Jane, since Nicky
wanted her.

And in the end it turned out that Jane had been captured in her sleep,
treacherously, by Auntie Emmy. And she had escaped, maddened with terror
of the large, nervous, incessantly caressing hands. She had climbed into
the highest branch of the tree of Heaven, and crouched there,
glaring, unhappy.

"Damn the cat!" said Anthony to himself. (It was not Jane he meant.)

He was distressed, irritated, absurdly upset, because he would have to
go back to Nicky without Jane, because he couldn't get Nicky what
he wanted.

In that moment Anthony loved Nicky more than any of them. He loved him
almost more than Frances. Nicky's earache ruined the fine day.

He confided in young Vereker. "I wouldn't bother," he said, "if the
little chap wasn't so plucky about it."

"Quite so, sir," said young Vereker.

It was young Mr. Vereker who found Jane, who eventually recaptured her.
Young Mr. Vereker made himself glorious by climbing up, at the risk of
his neck and in his new white flannels, into the high branches of the
tree of Heaven, to bring Jane down.

And when Anthony thanked him he said, "Don't mention it, sir. It's only
a trifle," though it was, as Mr. Norris said, pal