"He's just such another as you, Ranny," Winny said. (She was uncontrollable!) "Such a little man as he is, in those knickers."
"Damn his knickers," said Ranny to himself, behind his set teeth. But he smiled all the same; and by the time they had got into the wonderful walled garden of Golder's Hill he had recovered almost completely.
It was not decent to keep on sulking in a place which had so laid itself out to make you happy; where the sunshine flowed round you and soaked into you and warmed you as if you were in a bath. The garden, inclosed in rose-red walls and green hedges, was like a great tank filled with sunshine; sunshine that was visible, palpable, audible almost in its intensity; sunshine caught and contained and brimming over, that quivered and flowed in and around the wall-flowers, tulips and narcissus, that drenched them through and through and covered them like water, and was thick with all their scents. You walked on golden paths through labyrinths of brilliant flowers, through arches, tunnels and bowers of green. You were netted in sunshine, drugged with sweet live smells, caged in with blossoms, pink and white, of the espaliers that clung, branch and bud, like carved latticework, flat to the garden wall.
Neither could he well have sulked in the great space outside, where the green lawns unrolled and flung themselves generously, joyously to the sun, or where, on the light slope of the field beyond, the trees hung out their drooping vans, lifted up green roof above green roof, sheltering a happy crowd.
And even if these things, in their benignant, admonishing, reminding beauty, had not restored his decency, he was bound to soften and unbend, when, as they were going over the rustic bridge, Stanny tried to turn himself upside down among the water lilies. And as he captured Stanny by a miracle of dexterity, just in time, he realized, as if it had been some new and remarkable discovery, that his little son was dear to him.
By slow stages, after many adventures and delays, they reached the managerie on the south side.
"Oh, Daddy, Daddy, look at that funny bird!"
Dossie tugged and shouted.
In a corner of his yard, round and round, with inconceivable rapidity and an astounding innocence, as if he imagined himself alone and unobserved, the Emu danced like a bird demented. On tiptoe, absurdly elongated, round and round, ecstatically, deliriously, he danced. He danced till his legs and his neck were as one high perpendicular pole and his body a mere whorl of feathers spinning round it, driven by the flapping of his wings.
"He is making an almighty fool of himself," said Ranny.