'I must have an hour or two's quiet,' it said, 'I really must. My
nerves will give way unless I can get a little rest. You must
remember it's two thousand years since I had any conversation--I'm
out of practice, and I must take care of myself. I've often been
told that mine is a valuable life.' So it nestled down inside an
old hatbox of father's, which had been brought down from the
box-room some days before, when a helmet was suddenly needed for a
game of tournaments, with its golden head under its golden wing,
and went to sleep. So then Robert and Cyril moved the table back
and were going to sit on the carpet and wish themselves somewhere
else. But before they could decide on the place, Cyril said--
'I don't know. Perhaps it's rather sneakish to begin without the
girls.'
'They'll be all the morning,' said Robert, impatiently. And then
a thing inside him, which tiresome books sometimes call the 'inward
monitor', said, 'Why don't you help them, then?'
Cyril's 'inward monitor' happened to say the same thing at the same
moment, so the boys went and helped to wash up the tea-cups, and to
dust the drawing-room. Robert was so interested that he proposed
to clean the front doorsteps--a thing he had never been allowed to
do. Nor was he allowed to do it on this occasion.
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