"Aha!" cries old Mr. Amber, highly pleased. "I knew you would like it, Master Percival!"
"Why, I call it a castle!" Percival declares.
They turn the corner and Mr. Amber points with his stick. "Well, you're not quite wrong, either. That part—the East Wing we call that—you see how old that is? Almost a castle once, that. See those funny little marks? Used to be holes there to fire guns through. What do you think of that?"
Percival's face proclaims what he thinks—and his voice, deep with awe, says, "Fire them bang?"
"Bang? I should think so, indeed!"
"Who at?"
"Aha! Strange little boys, perhaps. I'll tell you all about it, if you'll come and see me sometimes."
Percival announces that he will come every single day, and runs eagerly up the five broad steps that lead to the great oak door, now standing ajar, and halts wonderingly upon the threshold to gaze around the spacious hall and up at the gallery that encircles it.
Aunt Maggie stops so abruptly and gives so strange a catch at her breath that Mr. Amber turns to look at her. Following her eyes, and reading what he fancies in them, "Why, he does make a brave little picture, standing there, doesn't he?" Mr. Amber says.
Her faint smile seems to assent. But she sees the child, framed in the fine doorway, as his father's son surveying for the first time the domain that is his own.