through him that was as foreign to her as though she had never seen the child before. She knew for a fact that he could put both his hands behind his ears and waggle them in so exasperating a fashion that every little girl who beheld him screamed and stuck out her tongue, and every little boy went into fits of joyful laughter and tried to imitate Robert's gesture; but not even in the nursery at home was he ever known to waggle hands behind ears. Certainly not in his home had he got the special inspiration such a gesture required.
This was not all. As he grew older Alice became conscious of a curious throbbing, chuffing noise. It was as though she heard an engine.
"Chuff, chuff, chuff!" it would go; "chucc, chucc!" It was a cautious, secretive engine and, grown-up and a mother as Alice was, she knew by instinct that it was a different make altogether from the ordinary steamboat or car noises with which every well-regulated nursery abounds. All she knew was that it emanated from Robert, and somehow or other she also knew that it was a noise from The Other Side. It became more evident when Robert's best friend, William Travers Jenkins, was in the house.
Alice and Mrs. Jenkins discussed it. "What are they up to?" Mrs. Jenkins wanted to know. "I can't tell you," said Alice. She had got far beyond the point of asking Robert such foolish things as, "What are you playing, dear?"
