"Why, who's here, Allan, Allan, my boy—is it you?"
"Yes, father, come here to dream in the old garden. Won't you and Mr. Cutler sit here and finish your cigars?"
He scarcely knew what he was saying. He was glad that they had come, and yet perhaps sorry too.
CHAPTER XXIV
IN WHICH LORD GOWERHURST RISES EARLY
His lordship had had a bad night. He had gone to sleep after his dinner, a foolish thing to do. He had tossed and turned restlessly in a strange bed and he loathed strange beds. Then after what had seemed to be interminable hours of sleeplessness and misery, he had fallen asleep to be awakened in apparently a few minutes by a feathered chorus in the beech tree, just outside his window.
What a noise they made, what a commotion with their piping and their shrill chattering. His Lordship sat up and solemnly cursed all birds.
A cock saluted the dawn in the customary manner; another, apparently some little distance away, took up the challenge. Lord Gowerhurst heard the crowing receding farther and farther till it was lost in the distance, then it came back, seemingly step by step to the original cock that was somewhere in his immediate neighbourhood. And all the time the birds kept up their incessant twittering and chattering and piping till the poor gentleman's nerves were on edge.
He rose, he thrust one bony leg from the bed, then the other. He went to the window, he shook his fist at the birds.
"Shoo! go away you beasts!" he shouted. "Go away, shoo!"