Page:Small Souls (1919).djvu/360

352 “Yes, if you keep still, old chap, and don’t move, you can stay like that.”

And he passed his fingers through his father’s short, curly hair, while Van der Welcke lay silent, closed his eyes and thought:

“Fancy me, when I was fourteen, pulling up my father by his arms and saying to him, ‘Look here, you’re squashing my stomach! . . . If you keep still, old chap, you can stay like that!’”

And he suddenly began to splutter with laughter.

“I say, what’s up? What are you laughing at?”

“Addie, I was thinking, I was thinking. . .”

“Well, what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking. . .”

And Van der Welcke began to wobble up and down with laughter.

“Oh, but I say! Woa! woa! Don’t go jumping about on my stomach like that! Hi! Stop! Keep still! What’s the joke?”

“I was thinking. . . of your Grandpapa’s face. . . if. . . when I was your age. . . I had hauled him up like that by his arms and said to him, ‘If you keep still. . . if you keep still. . . !’”

Addie’s sense of humour made him see the picture at once: Grandpapa, getting on for forty and very stately and dignified, and Papa, a boy like himself; and Papa saying:

“If you keep still, old chap, you can stay like that!”

And both of them burst with laughter, one on top of the other; and Addie, whom his father’s weight