“Well, Roy!” he said, and for a few seconds he steadily regarded his small son with eyes that tried very hard to be grave and judicial.  Scoldings and assertions of authority were not in his line:  and the tug at his heart-strings was peculiarly strong in the case of Roy.  Fair himself, as the boy was dark, their intrinsic likeness of form and feature was yet so striking that there were moments—­as now—­when it gave Nevil Sinclair an eerie sense of looking into his own eyes,—­which was awkward, as he had come steeled for chastisement, if needs must, though his every instinct revolted from the mutual indignity.  He had only once inflicted it on Roy for open defiance in one of his stormy ebullitions of temper; and, at this moment, he did not seem to see a humble penitent before him.

“What have you got to say for yourself?” he went on, hoping the pause had been impressive; strongly suspecting it had been nothing of the kind.  “Gentlemen, as I told you, don’t hammer their guests.  It was rather a bad hammering, to judge from his handkerchief.  And you don’t look particularly sorry about it either.”

“I’m not—­not one littlest bit.”

This was disconcerting; but Nevil held his ground.

“Then I suppose I’ve got to whack you.  If boys aren’t sorry for their sins, it’s the only way.”

Roy’s eyelids flickered a little.

“You better not,” he said with the same impersonal air of conviction.  “You see, it wouldn’t make me sorry.  And you don’t hurt badly.  Not half as much as Joe did.  He was mean.  He kicked.  I wouldn’t have stopped, all the same—­if you hadn’t come.”

The note of reproach was more disconcerting than ever.

“Well, if whacking’s no use, what am I to do with you?  Shut you up here till bedtime—­eh?”

Roy considered that dismal proposition, with his eyes on the summer world outside.

“Well—­you can if you like.  But it wouldn’t be fair.”  A pause.  “You don’t know what a horrid boy he was, Daddy. You’d have hit him harder—­even if he was a guest.”

“I wonder!” Nevil fatally admitted.  “Of course it would all depend on the provocation.”

“What’s ’provication’?”

The instant alertness, over a new word, brought back the smile to Nevil’s eyes.

“It means—­saying or doing something bad enough to make it right for you to be angry.”

“Well, it was bad enough.  It was”—­a portentous pause—­“about Mummy.”

“About Mummy?” The sharp change in his father’s tone was at once startling and comforting.  “Look here, Roy.  No more mysteries.  This is my affair as much as yours.  Come here.”

Pulling a bedside chair near the window, he sat down and drew Roy close to him, taking his shoulders between his hands.

“Now then, old boy, tell me just exactly what happened—­as man to man.”

The appeal was irresistible.  But—­how could he——?  The very change in his father’s manner made the telling at once more difficult and more urgent.