Ah Ha served cocktails around, and was kept busy, for Hancock and Froelig followed along. Terrence impartially drank stiff highballs of whatever liquor the immobile-faced Chinese elected to serve him, and discoursed fatherly to Leo on the iniquities and abominations of the flowing bowl.
Oh My entered, a folded note in his hand, and looked about in doubt as to whom to give it.
“Hither, wing-heeled Celestial,” Terrence waved him up.
“’Tis a petition, couched in very proper terms,” Terrence explained, after a glance at its contents. “And Ernestine and Lute have arrived, for ’tis they that petition. Listen.” And he read: “’Oh, noble and glorious stags, two poor and lowly meek-eyed does, wandering lonely in the forest, do humbly entreat admission for the brief time before dinner to the stamping ground of the herd.’
“The metaphor is mixed,” said Terrence. “Yet have they acted well. ’Tis the rule—Dick’s rule—and a good rule it is: no petticoats in the stag-room save by the stags’ unanimous consent.—Is the herd ready for the question? All those in favor will say ’Aye.’—Contrary minded?—The ayes have it.
“Oh My, fleet with thy heels and bring in the ladies.”
“‘With sandals beaten from the crowns of kings,’” Leo added, murmuring the words reverently, loving them with his lips as his lips formed them and uttered them.
“‘Shall he tread down the altars of their night,’” Terrence completed the passage. “The man who wrote that is a great man. He is Leo’s friend, and Dick’s friend, and proud am I that he is my friend.”
“And that other line,” Leo said. “From the same sonnet,” he explained to Graham. “Listen to the sound of it: ’To hear what song the star of morning sings’—oh, listen,” the boy went on, his voice hushed low with beauty-love for the words: “’With perished beauty in his hands as clay, Shall he restore futurity its dream—’”
He broke off as Paula’s sisters entered, and rose shyly to greet them.