"Some one was watching us, Aunt Maggie."
But Aunt Maggie was gone into her "thinking."
IV
There followed for Percival the most delightful two hours. There was first a prodigal tea in the housekeeper's room, where motherly Mrs. Ferris set him to work on scones and cream and strawberry jam, and where, as the meal progressed, he gladly gave himself over to Mr. Amber's entrancing stories of Burdon lore, while Aunt Maggie and Mrs. Ferris gossiped together.
Mrs. Ferris confirmed the arrival of servants in advance of Lord and Lady Burdon and gave some details of the visit. Her ladyship had written to say they expected to stay about a month. They came for the purpose of seeing if the fine air, for a holiday of that length, would pick up Rollo. "An ailing child," said Mrs. Ferris. "Just the opposite of that young gentleman, from all accounts," and she nodded towards the young gentleman, who beamed back at her as cheerfully as a prodigiously distended mouth would permit. "A lazy-looking lot," Mrs. Ferris thought the servants were, and ought to have come earlier, too, for there was work to be done getting the house ready, Miss Oxford might take her word for it—all the furniture and the pictures in dusting sheets—made her quite creepylike to look into the rooms sometimes. Not right, she thought it, to neglect the Manor like these were doing. She knew her place, mind you, but she meant to have a word with her ladyship before her ladyship went off again.
But the rooms had no creeps for Percival when at last the tea was done, the jam wiped off, and the promised tour of inspection started. He put a sticky hand confidingly into Mr. Amber's palm and breathed "'Normous! Simply 'normous to me, you know," as each apartment was discovered to him; and stood absorbed, the most gratifying of listeners, while Mr. Amber, comfortably astride his hobby, poured forth the stories and the legends that had gone into his cherished "Lives" and that he had by heart and could tell with an air which called up the actors out of their frames and out of the very walls to play their parts before the child. Yet once or twice he stopped in the midst of a recital and stood frowning as though something puzzled him, and once for so long that Percival asked: "Are you thinking of something else, Mr. Amber?"
"Eh?" said Mr. Amber. "Thinking? I'm afraid I was. Let me see, where was I?" But he turned away, leaving the story unfinished; and as they walked from the room Percival said politely: "I don't mind if you were, you know. I only asked. Aunt Maggie does it and I just run away and play."
Mr. Amber pressed his old fingers closer about the young hand they held. "Don't run away when I do it," he said. "Just wake me up. It keeps coming over me that I've done all this before—held a little boy's hand and told him all this just like I hold yours and tell you. Well, that's a very funny feeling, you know."
"'Strordinary!" Percival agreed in his interested way; and Mr. Amber was caused to laugh and to forget the stirring in his mind of recollections buried there twenty years down. Twenty years is deep water. It was to be more disturbed, causing much frowning, much "funny feeling," before ever it should clear and show the old librarian, looking into the pool of his own mind over Percival's shoulder, Percival's reflection cast up from the depths.
The tour finished in the library. "Now this is the library!" announced Mr. Amber at the threshold, much as St. Peter, coming with a new spirit to the last gate, might say: "Now this is Paradise."