“In a cupboard in the little red room. It’s such a jolly little room. It isn’t used now and there’s hardly anything in it, but the cupboards are full of things—lovely things. Patricia and I just explored.”
“It used to be my room and the things are all mine. Why haven’t they burnt them?” he muttered.
Christopher gathered up the unlucky photographs and put them back in the box. He was dimly conscious he did not want Mr. Aston to come and see them.
“I’m sorry, Cæsar, I didn’t know we shouldn’t have done it.”
“You haven’t done any harm, I—I had no business to be cross, old fellow. Come and show me the pictures again, I’ll tell you about them.”
Christopher sat down on the sofa with the box in 63 his hand. He really did want to know about them if Cæsar wasn’t going to be angry. He took out a photo at random.
“That was my first race-horse,” said Cæsar. “Her name was Loadstar. She didn’t win much, but I thought a lot of her. And that—oh, that’s a mastiff I had: he was magnificent, but such a brute I had to kill him. He went for one of the stable boys and I hardly got him off in time. I’ve got the marks now of his claws: he never bit me. We used to wrestle together.”
“Wrestle with a dog?”
“Yes, I used to be fairly strong, you know, Christopher. It was good training throwing him—sometimes it was the other way. But he had to die, poor old Brutus.”
“How did you kill him?”