"
Mr. Bosengate drew in his breath with a hiss.
"It's all right, Daddy; we got it out again, it's only grazed the skin.
And we've been making swabs--I made seventeen, Mummy made thirty-three,
and then she went to the hospital. Did you put many men in prison?"
Mr. Bosengate cleared his throat. The question seemed to him untimely.
"Only two."
"What's it like in prison, Daddy?"
Mr. Bosengate, who had no more knowledge than his little daughter,
replied in an absent voice:
"Not very nice."
They were passing under a young oak tree, where the path wound round
to the rosery and summer-house. Something shot down and clawed Mr.
Bosengate's neck. His little daughter began to hop and suffocate with
laughter.
"Oh, Daddy! Aren't you caught! I led you on purpose!"
Looking up, Mr. Bosengate saw his small son lying along a low branch
above him--like the leopard he was declaring himself to be (for fear of
error), and thought blithely: 'What an active little chap it is!' "Let
me drop on your shoulders, Daddy--like they do on the deer."
"Oh, yes! Do be a deer, Daddy!"
Mr. Bosengate did not see being a deer; his hair had just been brushed.
But he entered the rosery buoyantly between his offspring.
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