"Picture books?"
"Why, yes, some have got pictures. Yes, there are pictures in some. And fine big rooms, Percival. You would like to see them."
Percival turned an excited face to Aunt Maggie, and Aunt Maggie smiled. He took Mr. Amber's hand. "Thank you very much indeed," he said. "I tell you what, then. I will see your books and then I think you will let me play in your garden, please, if you please?"
Mr. Amber declared that this was a very fair bargain. "Come in and have some tea, Miss Oxford. Mrs. Ferris will be glad to see you. She finds housekeeping very dull work, I am afraid, with only me to look after."
Aunt Maggie did not reply immediately. Percival looked at her anxiously. He observed signs of "thinking," and thinking might be fatal to this most engaging proposition. "If you possibly could, Aunt Maggie!" he pleaded.
But it was Mr. Amber's further argument that persuaded her. His words acutely entered the matter with which she was occupied. "You know, Percival must be the only soul in the countryside that hasn't seen the Manor," he urged. "It was the regular custom for any one who liked to come up in the old days. You recollect the Tenant Teas in the summer? Why, it's his right, I declare."
A little colour showed on her cheeks. "Yes, it is his right," she said.
III
Percival was to enjoy another right before the day was out. The decision to accept Mr. Amber's invitation once made, he had whooped ahead through the Manor gates and flashed up the long drive at play with a game of his own among the flanking trees. A noble turn in the avenue brought him within astonished gaze of the house, and, very flushed in the cheeks, he came racing back to his elders.
"I say, it's a perfectly 'normous house you live in, Mr. Amber."