From the capricious production of inarticulate sounds, and then a few monosyllables that described concrete things and obvious desires, he had gradually acquired an astonishing idiomatic command over the most difficult of Teutonic languages; there was nothing that he could not say.
He could walk and run, was full of exact knowledge about God, and entertained no doubt concerning the special partiality of a minor deity called Jesus towards himself.
Now, this party was his mother's invention and scheme.
His father, after flouting it, had said that if it was to be done at all, it should be done well, and had brought to the doing all his organizing skill.
Cyril had accepted it at first--merely accepted it; but, as the day approached and the preparations increased in magnitude, he had come to look on it with favour, then with enthusiasm.
His father having taken him to Daniel Povey's opposite, to choose cakes, he had shown, by his solemn and fastidious waverings, how seriously he regarded the affair.
Of course it had to occur on a Thursday afternoon.
The season was summer, suitable for pale and fragile toilettes.
And the eight children who sat round Aunt Harriet's great table glittered like the sun.
Not Constance's specially provided napkins could hide that wealth and profusion of white lace and stitchery.
Never in after-life are the genteel children of the Five Towns so richly clad as at the age of four or five years.
Weeks of labour, thousands of cubic feet of gas, whole nights stolen from repose, eyesight, and general health, will disappear into the manufacture of a single frock that accidental jam may ruin in ten seconds.
Thus it was in those old days; and thus it is to-day.
Cyril's guests ranged in years from four to six; they were chiefly older than their host; this was a pity, it impaired his importance; but up to four years a child's sense of propriety, even of common decency, is altogether too unreliable for a respectable party.
Round about the outskirts of the table were the elders, ladies the majority; they also in their best, for they had to meet each other.
Constance displayed a new dress, of crimson silk; after having mourned for her mother she had definitely abandoned the black which, by reason of her duties in the shop, she had constantly worn from the age of sixteen to within a few months of Cyril's birth; she never went into the shop now, except casually, on brief visits of inspection.
She was still fat; the destroyer of her figure sat at the head of the table.
Samuel kept close to her; he was the only male, until Mr. Critchlow astonishingly arrived; among the company Mr. Critchlow had a grand-niece.
Samuel, if not in his best, was certainly not in his everyday suit.
With his large frilled shirt-front, and small black tie, and his little black beard and dark face over that, he looked very nervous and self-conscious.
He had not the habit of entertaining. Nor had Constance; but her benevolence ever bubbling up to the calm surface of her personality made self-consciousness impossible for her.
Miss Insull was also present, in shop-black, 'to help.'
Lastly there was Amy, now as the years passed slowly assuming the character of a faithful retainer, though she was only twenty- three.
An ugly, abrupt, downright girl, with convenient notions of pleasure! For she would rise early and retire late in order to contrive an hour to go out with Master Cyril; and to be allowed to put Master Cyril to bed was, really, her highest bliss.
All these elders were continually inserting arms into the fringe of fluffy children that surrounded the heaped table; removing dangerous spoons out of cups into saucers, replacing plates, passing cakes, spreading jam, whispering consolations, explanations, and sage counsel.
Mr. Critchlow, snow-white now but unbent, remarked that there was 'a pretty cackle,' and he sniffed.
Although the window was slightly open, the air was heavy with the natural human odour which young children transpire.
More than one mother, pressing her nose into a lacy mass, to whisper, inhaled that pleasant perfume with a voluptuous thrill.
Cyril, while attending steadily to the demands of his body, was in a mood which approached the ideal.
Proud and radiant, he combined urbanity with a certain fine condescension.
His bright eyes, and his manner of scraping up jam with a spoon, said:
"I am the king of this party.
This party is solely in my honour.
I know that.
We all know it.
Still, I will pretend that we are equals, you and I."
He talked about his picture-books to a young woman on his right named Jennie, aged four, pale, pretty, the belle in fact, and Mr. Critchlow's grand-niece.
The boy's attractiveness was indisputable; he could put on quite an aristocratic air.
It was the most delicious sight to see them, Cyril and Jennie, so soft and delicate, so infantile on their piles of cushions and books, with their white socks and black shoes dangling far distant from the carpet; and yet so old, so self-contained!
And they were merely an epitome of the whole table.
The whole table was bathed in the charm and mystery of young years, of helpless fragility, gentle forms, timid elegance, unshamed instincts, and waking souls.
Constance and Samuel were very satisfied; full of praise for other people's children, but with the reserve that of course Cyril was hors concours.
They both really did believe, at that moment, that Cyril was, in some subtle way which they felt but could not define, superior to all other infants.
Some one, some officious relative of a visitor, began to pass a certain cake which had brown walls, a roof of cocoa-nut icing, and a yellow body studded with crimson globules.
Not a conspicuously gorgeous cake, not a cake to which a catholic child would be likely to attach particular importance; a good, average cake!
Who could have guessed that it stood, in Cyril's esteem, as the cake of cakes?
He had insisted on his father buying it at Cousin Daniel's, and perhaps Samuel ought to have divined that for Cyril that cake was the gleam that an ardent spirit would follow through the wilderness.
Samuel, however, was not a careful observer, and seriously lacked imagination.
Constance knew only that Cyril had mentioned the cake once or twice.
Now by the hazard of destiny that cake found much favour, helped into popularity as it was by the blundering officious relative who, not dreaming what volcano she was treading on, urged its merits with simpering enthusiasm.