e
in it himself.

Still he was very happy to find himself back at Aston House. Its many
deserted rooms, the long, silent corridors and its strange spacious
emptiness lent themselves to his robust imagination more easily than
the living friendly warmth of the old house, brimful of actualities.
He re-explored every corner of house and garden in the first days of
return, interviewed the staff collectively and individually, from
Warren the butler, to the new scullery boy. He rearranged his books
and hunted up half-forgotten treasures, slid down the shiny banisters
fifty times a day and dispelled the silent lurking shadows with a
merry whistle and a laugh that woke an echo in quiet rooms. But he
regretted Patricia. It would have been very pleasant to take his turn
at showing her round--Patricia had only been in London once,--and
there would have been plenty to show her. Lessons, however,
recommenced almost at once and Christopher was left with little time
for regrets. Life fell back into its old grooves with the solitary
difference that those grooves seemed deeper worn and more familiar
than he had imagined. The months no longer only presented possible
problems; he could consult his memory as to what had previously been
at such a time or in like conditions.

He was also given much greater liberty now and encouraged to go out by
himself, and to do errands for Mr. Aston or Aymer. It was a proud day
for him when Aymer first sent him to The House with a letter for Mr.
Aston, who was acting secretary on a Committee at the time.
Christopher had had to wait and had sat outside a Committee room door
and watched men go to and fro, men whose faces were dimly familiar to
a student of illustrated papers, and men who were strange, but all men
doing something in return for the good things the world had given
them. Such at least was Christopher's innocent belief. Aymer did not
disillusion him.

He used to recount his small adventures to Caesar in the evenings and
was encouraged to form his own conclusions from what he had noticed
and to confirm existing ideas from actual life. Such conclusions and
ideas were naturally often childish and illogical, but Caesar never
appeared to find them laughable and would give careful and
illuminating consideration to the most chaotic theories.

The everlasting problem of riches and poverty, happiness and misery
often came uppermost, and on this point Christopher was assuredly, but
quite unconsciousl