Recognition was in the eyes, but they were filming.
"Yes, he knows you," the nurse whispered.
Quite firmly, firmer than he had yet spoken: "Hold my hand—my lord," Mr. Amber said, and ended the words and ended life with a little throaty sound.
The nurse disengaged their hands. "But I am so glad he did just recognise you," she said kindly.
III
Old friend wind was in tremendous fettle that night. Percival battled along Plowman's Ridge on his way back and had battled twenty minutes when he cried aloud, venting his grief, and answering the nurse's words, "He didn't recognise me!"
And old friend wind paused to listen; came in tremendous gusts, Ha! Ha! Ha! and hurled the words aloft and tossed and rushed them high along the Ridge.
"Something was wrong with me in there," Percival exclaimed. "Did I speak sense to him? What was happening to me? Was I dreaming? What was it?—oh, damn this wind!"
Ha! Ha! Ha! thundered old friend wind, staggering him anew—Ha! Ha! Ha!
An absolutely irrepressible party, old friend wind.