"Edith has been anxious about you. Indeed, we have all been anxious about you," he intoned, offering his hand to John, for whom the sweet damp odors of autumn became a whiff of pious women's veils, while the leaves fluttering gently down from the tulip tree in the middle of the lawn lisped like the India-paper of prayer-books.
"I've got an air-gun, Uncle John," ejaculated Harold, who having for some time been inhaling the necessary breath now expelled the sentence in a burst as if he had been an air-gun himself. John hailed the announcement almost effusively; it reached him with the kind of relief with which in childhood he had heard the number of the final hymn announced; and a robin piping his delicate tune from the garden wall was welcome as birdsong in a churchyard had been after service on Sundays handicapped by the litany.
"Would you like to see me shoot at something?" Harold went on, hastily cramming his mouth with slugs.
"Not now, dear," said Hilda, hastily. "Uncle John is tired. And don't eat sweets just before lunch."
"Well, it wouldn't tire him to see me shoot at something. And I'm not eating sweets. I'm getting ready to load."
"Let the poor child shoot if he wants to," Grandma put in.
Harold beamed ferociously through his spectacles, took a slug from his mouth, fitted it into the air-gun, and fired, bringing down two leaves from an espalier pear. Everybody applauded him, because everybody felt glad that it had not been a window or perhaps even himself; the robin cocked his tail contemptuously and flew away.
"And now I must go and get ready for lunch," said John, who thought a second shot might be less innocuous, and was moreover really hungry. His bedroom, dimity draped, had a pleasant rustic simplicity, but he decided that it wanted living in: the atmosphere at present was too much that of a well-recommended country inn.
"Yes, it wants living in," said John to himself. "I shall put in a good month here and break the back of Joan of Arc."
"What skin is this, Uncle John?" a serious voice at his elbow inquired. John started; he had not observed Harold's scout-like entrance.