"really couldn't," and departed. Departure is
perhaps too strong a word. In Mrs. Elliot's mouth it became, "My husband
has to sleep more in town." He often came down to see them, nearly
always unexpectedly, and occasionally they went to see him. "Father's
house," as Rickie called it, only had three rooms, but these were full
of books and pictures and flowers; and the flowers, instead of being
squashed down into the vases as they were in mummy's house, rose
gracefully from frames of lead which lay coiled at the bottom, as
doubtless the sea serpent has to lie, coiled at the bottom of the sea.
Once he was let to lift a frame out--only once, for he dropped some
water on a creton. "I think he's going to have taste," said Mr. Elliot
languidly. "It is quite possible," his wife replied. She had not taken
off her hat and gloves, nor even pulled up her veil. Mr. Elliot laughed,
and soon afterwards another lady came in, and they--went away.

"Why does father always laugh?" asked Rickie in the evening when he and
his mother were sitting in the nursery.

"It is a way of your father's."

"Why does he always laugh at me? Am I so funny?" Then after a pause,
"You have no sense of humour, have you, mummy?"

Mrs. Elliot, who was raising a thread of cotton to her lips, held it
suspended in amazement.

"You told him so this afternoon. But I have seen you laugh." He nodded
wisely. "I have seen you laugh ever so often. One day you were laughing
alone all down in the sweet peas."

"Was I?"

"Yes. Were you laughing at me?"

"I was not thinking about you. Cotton, please--a reel of No. 50 white
from my chest of drawers. Left hand drawer. Now which is your left
hand?"

"The side my pocket is."

"And if you had no pocket?"

"The side my bad foot is."

"I meant you to say, 'the side my heart is,'" said Mrs. Elliot, holding
up the duster between them. "Most of us--I mean all of us--can feel on
one side a little watch, that never stops ticking. So even if you had no
bad foot you would still know which is the left. No. 50 white, please.
No; I'll get it myself." For she had remembered that the dark passage
frightened him.

These were the outlines. Rickie filled them in with the slowness and the
accuracy of a child. He was never told anything, but he discovered for
himself that his father and mother did not love each other, and that his
mother was lovable. He discovered that Mr. Elliot had dubbed him Rickie
because he was rickety, that