"Dearest, I'd rather you didn't ask questions about the Bishop," his
mother replied, and discerning that she was on the verge of one of those
headaches that while they lasted obliterated the world for Mark, he was
silent. Later in the afternoon Mr. Astill, the Vicar, came round to see
the Missioner and they had a long talk together, the murmur of which now
softer now louder was audible in Mark's nursery where he was playing by
himself with the cork-bottomed grenadiers. His instinct was to play a
quiet game, partly on account of his mother's onrushing headache, which
had already driven her to her room, partly because he knew that when his
father was closeted like this it was essential not to make the least
noise. So he tiptoed about the room and disposed the cork-bottomed
grenadiers as sentinels before the coal-scuttle, the washstand, and
other similar strongholds. Then he took his gun, the barrel of which,
broken before it was given to him, had been replaced by a thin bamboo
curtain-rod, and his finger on the trigger (a wooden match) he waited
for an invader. After ten minutes of statuesque silence Mark began to
think that this was a dull game, and he wished that his mother had not
gone to her room with a headache, because if she had been with him she
could have undoubtedly invented, so clever was she, a method of invading
the nursery without either the attackers or the defenders making any
noise about it.
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