“Then I’ll go ahead with arrangements.”
Shirley’s eyes were overrunning the cropped lawn, which now showed a clear smooth slope between the arching trees. “It was lovely in its ruin,” she said, “but it was pathetic, too. Unc’ Jefferson used to say ‘De ol’ place look lak et ben griebin’ etse’f ter deff wid lonesomeness.’ Somehow, now it looks glad. Just hear that small citizen!”
A red squirrel sat up in a tree-crotch, his paws tucked into his furry breast, barking angrily at them. “He’s shocked at the house-cleaning,” she said; “a sign he’s a bachelor.”
“So am I,” said Valiant.
“Maybe he’s older than you,” she countered; “and sot in his ways.”
“I accept him as a warning,” he said, and she laughed with him.
He led them around the house and down the terraces of the formal garden, and here the major’s encomiums broke forth again. “You are going to take us old folks back, sah,” he said with real feeling. “This gyarden in its original lines was unique. It had a piquancy and a picturesqueness that, thank God, are to be restored! One can understand the owner of an estate like this having no desire to spend his life philandering abroad. We all hope, sah, that you will recur to the habit of your ancestors, and count Damory Court home.”
Valiant smiled slowly. “I don’t dream of anything else,” he said. “My life, as I map it out, seems to begin here. The rest doesn’t count—only the years when I was little and had my father.”
The major carefully adjusted his eye-glasses. His head was turned away. “Ah, yes,” he said.