Percival turned about. They had reached the boundary of the Manor grounds and he pointed through the trees. "Is that where you live, Mr. Amber?"
"Yes, I live in there. Look here, now, here's a nice thing! You're growing up nearly as big as me and you've never been to see me. That's not friendly, you know."
"Oh, but I've wanted to, you know," Percival cried. "We don't often come this way, you see, do we, Aunt Maggie?"
He bounded across the road to squint through the wooden paling that surrounds the Manor park, and Mr. Amber gave a little sigh and turned to Aunt Maggie.
"How Percival grows, Miss Oxford! And what a picture, what a picture! You know, he recalls to me walking these lanes twenty years ago, with just his counterpart in looks and spirits and charm—ah, well! dear me, dear me!" And he began to mumble to himself in the fashion of old people whose thoughts run more easily in the past than in the present, and to walk around poking with his stick in a fashion that was his own.
He referred to Roly, Aunt Maggie knew. "You never forget him, do you?" she said gently. She also was devoted to a memory. "You never forget him?"
"No—no," said Mr. Amber, poking around and not looking at her. "Certainly not—certainly not."
Percival's voice broke in upon them, announcing his observations through the fence. "I say, you've got a lovely garden to play in, you know," he called.
They turned from thoughts that had a common element to the bright young spirit in whom those thoughts found a not dissimilar relief.
"Well, it's not exactly my garden," Mr. Amber replied in his deliberate way. "I live there just like Honor lives with you. She looks after the cooking and I look after the books, eh? Would you like to see my books?"