Derry's face brightened. "You don't mind?"
"Of course not," stoutly. "Bronson says that the rain has stopped. There's probably a moon somewhere, if you'll look for it."
Margaret went up to put the children to bed. Emily, promising to come back, withdrew to write a letter. The old man sat alone.
He limped into the blue room, and gazed indifferently around on its treasures. Once he had cared for these plates and cups—his quest for rare porcelains had been eager.
And now he did not care. The lovely glazed things were for the eye, not for the heart. He would have given them all for the touch of a loving hand, for a voice that grew tender—.
There was the patter of little feet on the polished floor. Margaret-Mary in a diminutive blue dressing gown and infinitesimal slippers, with her curls brushed tidily up from the back of her neck and skewered with a hairpin, came over and laid her hand on his knee. "Dus a 'itte 'tory?" she asked ingratiatingly. She adored stories.
He picked her up, and she curled herself into the corner of his arm.
Her mother found her there. "Mother's naughty little girl," she said, "to run away—"
"Let her stay," the General begged. "Somehow my heart needs her tonight."