It happened this-wise. Sir Joshua having stolen a joyous but unsafe hour of liberty fell a victim to the cunning of the feline race. Christopher rescued the corpse and heaped tearful threats of vengeance on the murderess, and then tore into Cæsar’s room to find sympathy and comfort. He tumbled in at the window with Sir Joshua in his arms, and flung himself on Cæsar before he had observed the presence of a visitor—a stranger, too. He was a big, florid man, with a good-natured face and great square chin, and he was standing with his back to the fire, looking very much at home. He gave a slight start as Christopher tumbled in, and a queer little cynical smile dawned on his face as he watched the two.
“Hallo, Aymer, I didn’t know you had––”
“Go and get ready for tea, Christopher,” interrupted Aymer peremptorily, “and take out that animal. Don’t you see I have a visitor?”
Christopher, who had just perceived the stranger, hardly disguised his lack of appreciation of so inopportune a caller, and went out to see what consolation could be got out of Vespasian. When he returned, 94 tidy and clean, even to Vespasian’s satisfaction, he found the two men talking hard and slipped quietly into his seat behind the little tea-table hoping to be unobserved; but Cæsar called him out of it.
“Peter,” he said, “let me present my adopted son to you. Christopher, shake hands with Mr. Masters.”
The big man and the small boy looked at each other gravely, and then Christopher extended his hand. Aymer looked out of the window and apparently took no notice of them.
“How do you do, sir?”
“What’s your name besides Christopher?” demanded the visitor. He had queer, light blue, piercing eyes that were curiously unexpressive and looked through one to the back of one’s head, but, unlike Mr. Aston’s kind, steady gaze, that invited one to open one’s soul to it, the immediate impulse here was to pull down the blinds of one’s individuality in hasty self-defence, and realise, even in doing it, that it was too late.
“Aston,” said Christopher, rather hastily, escaping to the tea-table.
Peter Masters looked from him to Aymer with the same queer smile.