The blood ran ridiculously to his head. He found his tongue, and pulled himself sharply together.
‘So am I, dear. Of course, it’s a long way to come—America.’ He stooped and bestowed the necessary kisses upon the others, who had followed their leader and now stood close beside him, staring like little owls in a row.
‘I know,’ she replied gravely. ‘It takes weeks, doesn’t it? And mother has told us such a lot about you. We’ve been waiting a very long time, I think,’ she added as though stating a grievance.
‘I suppose it is rather a long time to wait,’ he said sheepishly. He stroked his beard and waited.
‘All of us,’ she went on. She included the others in this last observation by bending her head at them, and into her uncle’s memory leaped the vision of a slender silver birch tree that grew on the edge of the Big Beaver Pond near the Canadian border. She moved just as that silver birch moved when the breeze caught it.
Her manner was very demure, but she looked so piercingly into the very middle of his eyes that Paul felt as though she had already discovered everything about him. They all stood quite close to him now, touching his knees; ready, there and then, to take him wholly into their confidence.
An impulse that he only just managed to control stirred in him and a curious pang accompanied it. He remembered his ‘attitude,’ however, and stiffened slightly.
‘No, it only takes ten days roughly from where I’ve come,’ he said, leaving the mat and dropping into a deep arm-chair a little farther off. ‘The big steamers go very fast, you know, nowadays.’
Their eyes remained simply glued to his face. They switched round a few points to follow his movement, but did not leave their squares of carpet.
‘Madmerzelle said’—it was Toby, née Arabella Lucy, speaking for the first time—‘you knew lots of stories about deers and wolves and things, and would look like a Polar bear for us sometimes.’