"Where's Jane?" Paul asked.
"She's busy. Half the borough seem to be calling, or telephoning"—and even at that moment Paul could hear the maid tripping across the hall and opening the front door—"I've told her what occurred. She seemed half skeered. She's had a dreadful day, pore gal."
"She has indeed," said Paul.
He threw himself into a chair, dead beat, at the end of emotional strain, and remained talking with the old man of he scarce knew what. But these two—Jane and the old man—were linked to him by imperishable ties, and he could not leave them yet awhile in the house of death. Barney Bill stirred the fire, which blazed up, making the perky animals on the hearth cast faint and fantastic shadows.
"It's funny how he loved those darned little beasts, isn't it now? I remember of him telling me as how they transported him into magic something—or the other—medi—he had a word for it—I dunno—"
"Mediaeval?"
"That's it, sonny. Mediaeval forests. It means back of old times, don't it? King Arthur and his Round Table—I done a bit of reading, yer know." The old man took out pouch and pipe. "That's what drew us together, sonny, our taste for literature. Remember?"
"Can I ever forget?" said Paul.
"Well, he was like that too. He had lots of po'try in him—not the stuff that rhymes, yer know, like 'The Psalm of Life' and so forth, but real po'try. I wish I could tell yer what I mean—" His face was puckered into a thousand wrinkles with the intellectual effort, and his little diamond eyes gleamed. "He could take a trumpery common thing like that there mug-faced, lop-eared hare and make it stand for the medi-what-you-call-it-forest. I've said to him, 'Come out with me on the old 'bus if you want green and loneliness and nature.' And he has said—I recollect one talk in particular—he said, 'I'd love to hear' something about a pipe—I'm getting old, sonny—"
"The Pipes of Pan?" Paul suggested.