“Didn’t my father tell you?” he asked.
A kind of nervous exasperation seized on Christopher. He was tired, overwrought, puzzled and baffled.
“No one tells me anything,” he said petulantly, blinking hard to keep back the tears; “they just took me.”
“Do you want to be a page boy?”
“No.” It was emphatic to the point of rudeness.
Aymer put his arm round him and drew him near, laughing.
“You are not going to be a page,” he said, “you are going to be”—he hesitated—“to be my own boy—just as if you were my son. I’ve adopted you.”
“Why?”
Christopher’s dark eyes were fixed on the blue ones and then he saw the scar for the first time. It interested him so much he hardly heard Aymer’s slow answer when it came.
“I have a great deal of time on my hands, and I should have liked a son of my own. As I can’t have that I’ve adopted you. Don’t you think you can like me?”