What a long time it seems since I was jealous of Bobby's Begum! We are a little behind father, whispering with our heads together, while he, in his raspingest voice, is giving his delinquent a month's warning.

That tone! it still makes me feel sneaky.
"Bobby," say I, putting my arm through his substantial one, and speaking in a low tone of misgiving, "how is he?
how has he been ?" "We have been a little fractious," replies Bobby, leniently--"a little disposed to quarrel with our bread-and-butter; but, as you may remember, my dear, from _your_ experience of our humble roof, Christmas never was our happiest time." "No, never," reply I, pensively.
The storm is rising: at least father's voice is.

It appears that the valet is not only to go, but to go without a character.
"Never you mind," repeats Bobby, reassuringly, seeing me blench a little at these disused amenities, pressing the hand that rests on his arm against his stout side; "it is nothing to _you_! bless your heart, you are the apple of his eye." "Am I ?" reply I, laughing.

"It has newly come to me, if I am." "And I am his 'good, brave Bobby!'-- his 'gallant boy!'-- do you know why ?" "No." "Because I am going to Hong-Kong, and he hears that they are keeping two nice roomy graves open all the time there!" "You are _not_ ?" (in a tone of keen anxiety and pain); then, with a sudden change of tone to a nervous and constrained amenity: "Yes, it _is_ a nice-sized room, is not it?
My only fault with it is, that the windows are so high up that one cannot see out of them when one is sitting down." For father, having demolished his body-servant, and reduced mother to her usual niche-state, now turns to me, and, in his genialest, happiest society-manner, compliments me on my big house.
That is a whole day ago.

Since then, I have grown used to seeing father's austere face, unbent into difficult suavity, at the opposite end of the dinner-table to me, to hearing the well-known old sound of Tou Tou's shrieks of mixed anguish and delight, as Bobby rushes after her in headlong pursuit, down the late so silent passages; and to looking complacently from one to another of the holiday faces round the table, where Barbara and I have sat, during the last noiseless month, in stillest dialogue or preoccupied silence.
I _love_ noise.