“Who?”
“Your godfather.”
Launce went to the gun-room with a happy face, and greeted his godfather with a nod, as one boy greets another. Mr. Geoffrey Launcelot was sitting on the table, apparently busy in admiring his own legs, very effective in new gaiters. He went straight to the point, as was his custom. “How’s the brown rabbit?”
“Well, sir, thank you, and has seven little ones. I’ve given two to Bill’s boy.”
“That’s right. Always give away what you don’t want yourself. How’s Foxy?”
“He’s well too.”
“And what do you think of your new aunt?”
Launce stood gazing at him above the mouse-cage. He opened his lips to speak, but the vision came on him again, and something beat in his heart and choked his throat like the flutter of prisoned wings. He stood stammering, and felt with amazement his own cheeks grown wet with tears.
Mr. Launcelot handed him a handkerchief with an unmoved face. “Boy,” said he, “I’m sometimes damnably afraid you’re going to be a poet.”
Launce steadied his nerves with Mrs. Annerley’s veal pie. He slept in a little gaunt room looking out over the gardens. Downstairs there was music—Lucia’s laughter, the piano. Uncle Will’s hunting songs, and then young Geoffrey’s tenor, high and wild as a bugle, ringing through the hollow corridors.