Mr. Amber will start as though he had been dreaming. "Funny? Eh? Why, no, Percival; nothing funny at all."
"If it is my boots, they are quite clean. I gave them twelve wipes each, like you told me."
"Funny us two sitting up here like this, like two mountains in the sea. Rather jolly, isn't it?"
"It recalls to me," says Mr. Amber, "another little boy who used to sit up there just as you sit.... In this dim light ... there are ways you have, Percival..."
Silence again. Twilight gathering in the corners of the vast room. A moth softly thudding the window-pane. There is something in the atmosphere that seems to hold Percival. At "Post Offic" he likes the lamps to be lit when dusk draws down; here there is a feeling of gentleness about him, with curious half-thoughts and with half-familiar gropings and stretchings of the shadows. "Thinking without thinking, as if I was in some one else who was thinking," he has described it to Aunt Maggie.
"Your voice, too," says Mr. Amber suddenly.
Percival knows what is in Mr. Amber's mind. "Thinking of your young lordship, aren't you, Mr. Amber?"
"He used to sit there," Mr. Amber replies. "In this dim light ... seeing you there..."
Silence again. Twilight wreathing from the corners across the ceiling; shadows grouping and moving in new fantasies; soft thuddings of the moth as though a shadow beat to enter.
Percival stretches a hand, and against the window's light perceives a shadow he has watched drift caressingly about his fingers.
Mr. Amber, little above a whisper, peering through the gloom: "Why do you stretch your hand so, my lord?"
"I'm touching a shadow that's come right up to me;" and then Percival realises the last words, and laughs and says: "You called me 'my lord!'--you did really, Mr. Amber!"
"God bless me!" says Mr. Amber, shaking himself--"God bless me, we are getting the shadows in our brains. Come down and watch me light the lamps."
Happy, happy time! Best of all when the family is at the Old Manor and when the friendship with Rollo can be taken up where it was left, to be deepened and to be discovered more than ever fruitful of delights. The boys are older now. Childish games are done with; very serious talks (so they believe) take the place of the chatter and the "pretending" of earlier days: they discuss affairs, mostly arising from adventures in the books they read; there has been a general election, and they agree that the Liberals are awful rotters; there has been one of the little wars, and they kindle together to the glory of British arms and wish they might be Young Buglers and be thanked by the general before the whole regiment like the heroes of Mr. Henty's books.