o do."

"Was the Queen angry?"

"I don't know."

"What was it?"

Aymer cut the leaves of the book he was trying to read rather
viciously.

"Taking care of me," he said shortly.

Christopher got up on his knees and stared.

"Hadn't you got Vespasian then?"

"Good heavens, Christopher, are you a walking inquisition? My father
gave up his appointment--if you must know, because of my----" he
stopped, and went on doggedly, "of my accident. I wasn't particularly
happy when I found I had to stay on a sofa all the rest of my life,
and he had to teach me not to make an idiot of myself. Now you know
all about it and need not bother anyone else with questions."

Christopher thought he knew very little about it, but he had learnt
what he set out to know and was moreover now aware that the subject
was distasteful to Aymer, so he politely changed it. "Robert's
brother has got some very nice guinea-pigs," he said thoughtfully.

"Who is Robert?"

"Robert is the under footman. I forgot you don't know him."

Christopher recollected with momentary embarrassment Aymer's
inaccessibility to the general domestic staff.

"He wants to find a home for them," he added hastily; "he doesn't mind
where, so long as it's a happy home."

Aymer guarded a smile. Christopher was already notorious for ingenious
methods of getting what he wanted.

"It would be a pity for them to be ill-treated, of course," he agreed
gravely.

Christopher shuffled across the floor to the side of the big sofa.

"It's rather a happy home here, you know," he remarked suggestively,
touching Aymer's arm tentatively with one finger.

"I am glad you think so. Do you consider the atmosphere equally
suitable for guinea-pigs?"

"I should like them." He rubbed his cheek caressingly on Aymer's hand.
"May I, Caesar?"

"Not to keep in your bedroom as you did the bantam."

"But in the garden--or yard. _Please_, dear Caesar."

"You ridiculous baby, yes. If you make a house for them yourself."

Christopher flew off in a transport of joy to consult with Vespasian,
who, from mere tolerance of his beloved master's last "fad," had
become the most ardent if unemotional partisan of the same "fad."

It was Vespasian who had provided Christopher with more clothes than
he deemed it possible for one mortal boy to wear, who taught him how
to put them on, and struggled with him figuratively and literally over
the collar question. Vespasian's taste running to a wide margin