"_Pride_ comes before a fall," corrected Percival. "You've got it wrong _again_, Honor," and Honor's flow was checked with the suddenness that had become the established termination of attempts to reprove Percival since he had learnt the right phrasing of her store of confused maxims.
She took his hand while she pondered doubtfully upon the correction, and with Aunt Maggie holding the other, he skipped along, bubbling over with his adventures. "I've got bandages on both my legs, Aunt Maggie--oh, and Hunt has got one of his legs in the grave, just fancy that! I've been having tea with Rollo; and Lady Burdon put on these bandages and she wants me to go and play with Rollo every day. _Do_ let me, Aunt Maggie. I say, you are squeezing my hand most dreffly, you know."
Aunt Maggie relaxed the sudden contraction of her fingers. "Lady Burdon--yes?--tell from the very beginning, Percival dear."
"Well, she said 'Promise to tell your Aunt Maggie I will come and ask her to let you be Rollo's little friend and'--Aunt _Maggie_! You're _hurting_!"
She recollected herself again and patted the small fingers. "Tell from the very beginning, dear. How did you meet them?"
"Well, you understand, I was catching a frog--"
"Post Offic" was reached, supper was swallowed, his merry head beginning to droop and nod, while still he excitedly recounted all his adventures. He was almost asleep when Aunt Maggie undressed him and put him to bed.
She sat a long time beside him, watching him while he slept.
In the morning Lady Burdon came with Rollo to make her request that Percival might spend much of his time at the Old Manor as Rollo's playmate. In these seven years since the amazement at Miller's Field, this was but her third visit to the estate, her first for the purpose of staying any length of time, and the first that had seen Rollo with her. Two days had been spent here when Jane Lady Burdon had been brought to rest in Burdon churchyard; three when Mr. Maxwell, the agent, had been troublesome and importunate in the matter of expensive alterations on the property. Lady Burdon had come down then "to have an understanding with him;" as she expressed it--"to see for herself." The result had been as unfortunate for Mr. Maxwell (to whom she had shown some temper) as it had been augmentative of the dislike she had always felt for the property and its greedy responsibilities. The result had been to filter over the countryside from Mr. Maxwell that she was the controlling partner in the new representatives of the house; that hers was the refusal to take up the urgently needed irrigation scheme; hers the scandal (as it became) of neglect to carry out improvements in the cottages over at Abbess Roding; hers the crime (as it was held) of the selling-up over at Shepwall that entailed eviction of tenants old on the land as the house of Burdon itself.