He nodded:
“I came to see if Noll were well,” he said.
She made as though she would lead him to the boy’s bedside:
“It will do Noll good just to see you,” she said.
The big man held her hand:
“Ah, my dear Caroline—I come for my own pleasure, not for his. Noll being ill, the town seems unholy quiet. History is an empty tragedy without its historian—an epic less than doggerel without its poet. And the town, being bereft of Noll, has ceased to be moved with incident. The world is become a dead-house. What an eye a boy has for calamities! He scents an event in the air. He arrives before the accident. A boy is always thrilled at the sight of a powder-cask——”
“I wish, Eustace, you were not always throwing lighted matches so near the cask.”
The great fellow laughed jovially, and kissing her hand, he strode over to the bed where Noll lay, his eyes upon him. The greetings were very cordial. There had always been the alliance of understanding between them.
“Noll,” said Lovegood, sitting down on the bed at his feet—“dear boy, I am not well versed in the teething of infants, the lacy mysteries of long-clothes, the cooing garrulities of the cradle, but—I was once a boy.... I remember the emotional moments of boyhood.... I have never forgotten my first pork-pie.... I would fain have brought you a rare roast goose, Oliver; but I had to decide on the homely chicken broth.”
He turned and called: