"Evelyn will be well in a day or two. Until then we've got to have quiet."
"I wasn't making any noise," said Robert.
"I wasn't," said William Travers.
"I heard you," said Alice, but here one of Sara's tropical tempests raged through the nursery. She stamped her feet.
"You take your old Uncle Zotsby away," she said, "him and his dog! I won't have him here with Evelyn Dearie. He's not my Uncle Zotsby, he's only your Uncle Zotsby! He's got steam engines inside him instead of real insides like us. He tells William and Robert how the world's made. Take him away." But here Robert cried in fury:
"You stop, you stop, you shut up!"
He might have even committed the crime of striking his sister had not his mother intervened. She knew what an outrage it was against his spiritual modesty. She knew that face to face and hostile stood her children's playmates from The Other Side. It was a critical moment.
Into the silence Robert said, "Now you'll never know the name of Uncle Zotsby's dog!"
"I'm going to take you out to walk with me," Alice said quietly to Sara.
"Who'll take care of Evelyn Dearie?" asked Sara.
"Your father," answered Alice brazenly. She paid no attention to Robert's scarlet face. She might not have heard anything of Uncle Zotsby or his dog, but just the same her heart was bleeding for Robert.
"We're going out," she told her husband, "and you'll have to take care of Evelyn while we're gone." Tom was so acquiescent as to arouse his wife's suspicions. But Sara was relieved. With father she felt
