But it was not jealousy that had silenced Aunt Maggie and caused her to clutch Percival to her breast. At sight of him with Rollo, and of Lady Burdon smiling at him, that fluttering had run up in her brain, and she had clasped Percival to restrain herself while it lasted. It had gone while she held him; but she had almost cried: "Do you dare smile at him? He is Audrey's son! Audrey's son!"
Percival wriggled from her embrace and she heard Lady Burdon say to Rollo: "Well, why not a pony here?" and heard her laugh delightedly at the excited roar the suggestion shot out of Percival.
"I wonder if there is anywhere here we could get a pony for Rollo?" she heard Lady Burdon say, and heard the question repeated, and made a great effort to come out of the shaken state in which the fluttering had left her.
"Over at Market Roding you might get a pony," she said dully. "There is a Mr. Hannaford there. He has ponies. He supplies ponies to circuses, I have heard."
Lady Burdon kissed Percival good-by at the gate. "Lord Burdon shall take you over with Rollo to this Mr. Hannaford," she told him. "That Miss Purdie's cottage? We are going to look in on our way. Run back to your Aunt Maggie. She is tired, I think."
"Well, she's thinking, you know," said Percival.
Lady Burdon laughed. "Thinking, is she, you funny little man? Of what?"
And Percival, in his earnest way: "Well, I don't know. It 'plexes me, you know."
The pony was obtained from Mr. Hannaford and lessons were arranged with Miss Purdie.
It was the happiest party that occupied the wagonette on that drive to and from Mr. Hannaford's farm at Market Roding. Lord Burdon, Rollo, Percival--each declared it that evening to have been the very jolliest time that ever was.
"Well, we have had a jolly day, haven't we, old man?" Lord Burdon said to Rollo when he kissed him good night. Lord Burdon had worn a shabby old suit and had told the boys stories till, as he assured them, his tongue ached; and had walked with them about Mr. Hannaford's farm, with Percival prancing on one side and Rollo quietly beaming on the other. In London, in the life that Lady Burdon directed at Mount Street, such careless, childish joys were impossible. Not since the day he had spent with Rollo at the Zoölogical Gardens, when Lady Burdon was at Ascot, had he so completely enjoyed himself--and not a doubt but that the bursting excitement of young Percival was responsible for the far greater joviality of this day at Mr. Hannaford's.