continuation of the smile, "You needn't look at _me_!"

Edward Henry considered the remark otiose. Though he had indeed
ventured to look at her, he had not looked at her in the manner which
she implied.

"It made a noise like funerals and things," Robert explained.

"Well, it seems to me _you've_ been playing a funeral march," said
Edward Henry to the child.

He thought this rather funny, rather worthy of himself, but the child
answered with ruthless gravity and a touch of disdain (for he was a
disdainful child, without bowels):

"I don't know what you mean, father." The curve of his lips (he had
his grandmother's lips) appeared to say: "I wish you wouldn't try to
be silly, father." However, youth forgets very quickly, and the next
instant Robert was beginning once more, "Father!"

"Well, Robert?"

By mutual agreement of the parents the child was never addressed
as "Bob" or "Bobby," or by any other diminutive. In their practical
opinion a child's name was his name, and ought not to be mauled or
dismembered on the pretext of fondness. Similarly, the child had not
been baptized after his father, or after any male member of either the
Machin or the Cotterill family. Why should family names be perpetuated
merely because they were family names? A natural human reaction, this,
against the excessive sentimentalism of the Victorian era!