“Mr. Knapp will be too busy, I expect,” replied Mrs. Walters, although the invitation was confirmed in her eyes.

“On Saturday, is it?” asked Bony. When assured that it was, he nodded, saying: “Since the forty-hour week came in and no one works on Saturday, why should I? Yes, I’ll be delighted to go. I assume there will be an exhibition of hand-crafts?”

“Oh yes, Mr. Knapp,” both children answered.“Stacks of all sorts of things. But the afternoon tea’s the best. It’s a beaut. You can eat as much as you want.”

Inspector Walters came in and sat down to breakfast. The boy and girl rose from the table and each removed their chair to back against the wall. Mrs. Walters smiled at them, and the inspector said:

“You get downto work, Keith. You’ve been slacking lately. And ride that bike on the road and not on the sidewalk… or else.”

“All right, Pop. Say, Mr. Knapp’sgunner go to Activities Day onSat’day.”

Mrs. Walters uttered the beginning of an exclamation. Her husband nodded his interest. Keith, who realised his error, reddened, anddeflatedly left by the rear door, the girl taking the passage through to the front. Walters chuckled:

“Young feller is in for a surprise today,” he remarked. “I wrote a complaint to Old Bilge about Keith’s ‘gunners’ and ‘jists’. What the devil we are paying terrific fees for, I don’t know. Just as well the boy isn’t boarding and out of our reach for a term at a time.”

“I hope you weren’t too sharp with Mr. Rose,” said Mrs. Walters. “He has a very big job with all those boys, and he does take a tremendous interest in them.”

“Don’t worry, Esther, I was polite enough. I don’t expect the headmaster, or even the form masters, to be listening all the time for errors of pronunciation, but when it becomes a conspiracy to distort and torture the language, then they should know about it.” To Bony he said: “You gunnerbe… Oh damn!”