It was Nicky who broke through this moment now, clamouring in his turn to be allowed access to the patch of blue that so excited the grown-ups, and who then proceeded to rub his brown fists in it and tear the delicate little flowers up before anyone could stop him.  Indeed, after the first moment Ishmael did not try.  He sat watching until Nicky, with all the uncontrolled excitement of highly-strung children who so often lose their heads and do things for which they suffer agonies in the watches of the night for long afterwards, was shouting and tearing at the flowers and throwing them over Georgie and drawing attention to himself by every extravagance his child’s brain could light upon.

“Look at me, Georgie; look at me!” he cried, pulling a bunch of the flowers through his buttonhole and jumping up on a boulder that thrust itself through the turfy cliffside; “I’m the King of the Castle, I’m the King of the Castle!...”  Georgie threw a few bits of grass at him and then turned to go on with an argument she had been having with Ishmael when the sight of the vernal squills had distracted them.  Nicky would not leave them alone; determined not to be ignored, he went on pelting her and kept up his monotonous chant:  “I’m the King of the Castle, I’m the King of the Castle....”

“Don’t do that,” said Ishmael sharply.  “Do you hear me, Nicky?  Leave off!” But Nicky went on, and, finding no notice was being taken of him, he flung a frond of bracken, then, losing his temper, a clod of earth and turf he dug up from the ground.  It hit Georgie on the cheek and scattered against her; a tiny fragment of stone in it cut her skin slightly, so that a thin thread of blood sprang out.  Nicky felt suddenly very frightened.  He kept up his song, but his note had altered, and as Ishmael got to his feet his voice died away.

“Don’t be angry with him,” said Georgie quickly.  “He didn’t do it on purpose.”

She felt the embarrassment one is apt to feel at a display of authority over some third person.  She looked at Ishmael as though it were she he was angry with, and felt a ridiculous kinship with Nicky.  The little boy stood away from them both, defiant, scowling from below his fair brows, his small chest heaving, his nervous eyes sidelong.  He was frightened, therefore all the more likely to make matters worse by rudeness.  Ishmael was, unreasonably, more annoyed than he had ever been with Nicky, who had often been far more disobedient and in more of a temper.  Ishmael picked him up and held him firmly for all his wriggling.  Nicky yelled and screamed; his small face was scarlet with fear and passion; he drummed with his heels against his father’s legs and hit out with his pathetically useless fists.  Ishmael swung him under his arm.

“Please—­” began Georgie.

“I am going to take him home,” said Ishmael.  “You had better not come.  You’ll find the others at the foot of the cliff, you know.”  He went on up over the brow of the cliff, carrying the screaming, struggling Nicky with the terrible ease of a grown-up coping with a child.  Georgie remained sitting where she was for a few moments till the exhausted screams of Nicky died in the distance.