"So now he is yours and mine," cried Rollo, squeezing the hand he held.
"Thank you very much," Percival said. "Of course, if his headache is very bad we won't have him, because he will like to lie down."
He spoke clearly; and a tiny little tremble of Egbert's back seemed to advertise again the gratitude that sympathy aroused in him.
"Oh, that's nothing," Rollo declared. "He pretends."
The poor back drooped. "Tyrangs," Egbert murmured and furtively edged a vegule to his mouth.
II
In the dusk of that evening Percival went bounding home, immensely pleased with his new friends and with the new delights in life they had discovered for him. He had nice clean knees and a bandage on each—a matter that caused him considerable pride. He had gladly promised to come to see Rollo again on the morrow, and he would have stayed much longer into the evening had not Lord Burdon (as Lady Burdon said) "begun to fidget" and to persist that Miss Oxford must be getting nervous at this long absence.
"His aunt will naturally be glad when she knows where he has been," Lady Burdon had exclaimed.
Lord Burdon gave the smile that she knew came before one of his annoying rejoinders. "That won't make her wild with joy while she doesn't know where he is, old girl."
She was irritable. The vexation of having to leave London, which she enjoyed, for Burdon which she felt she would hate, was settling upon her. She looked at him resentfully. "That is funny, I suppose?" she inquired. "You are always very funny, aren't you?" and she gave orders for Hunt to take Percival home.