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evening, after I had ridden over to take dinner with them.
    “Plans, sir? No,” I said, uncertain of his meaning.
    “Early yet, of course,” he answered, “and I suppose you cannot very well do so until Ambrose and his wife return home. I wondered whether you had considered looking around the neighborhood for some small property of your own.”
    I was slow to grasp his meaning. “Why should I do that?” I asked.
    “Well, the position is somewhat changed, isn’t it?” he said in matter-of-fact tones. “Ambrose and his wife will want most naturally to be together. And if there should be a family, a son, things won’t be the same for you, will they? I am certain Ambrose won’t let you suffer from the change, and will buy you any property you fancy. Of course it is possible they will have no children, but on the other hand there is no reason to suppose they won’t. You might prefer to build. It is sometimes more satisfactory to build your own place than take over a property for sale.”
    He continued talking, mentioning places within twenty miles or so of home that I might care to own, and I was thankful that he did not seem to expect a reply to anything he said. The fact was that my heart was too full to answer him. What he suggested was so new and unexpected that I could barely think straight, and shortly afterwards made an excuse to go. Jealous, yes. Louise was right about that, I supposed. The jealousy of a child who must suddenly share the one person in his life with a stranger.
    Like Seecombe, I had seen myself doing my utmost to settle down to new uncomfortable ways. Putting out my pipe, rising to my feet, making an effort at conversation, drilling myself to the rigors and tedium of feminine society. And watching Ambrose, my god, behaving like a ninny, so that I should have to leave the room from sheer embarrassment. I had never once seen myself an outcast. No longer wanted, put out of my home and pensioned like a servant. A child arriving, who would call Ambrose father, so that I should be no longer needed.
    Had it been Mrs. Pascoe who had drawn my attention to this possibility I should have put it down as malice, and forgotten it. But my own godfather, quiet and calm, making a statement of fact, was different. I rode home, sick with uncertainty and sadness. I hardly knew what to do, or how to act. Should I make plans, as my godfather had said? Find myself a home? Make preparations for departure? I did not want to live anywhere else, or possess another property. Ambrose had brought me up and trained me for this one alone. It was mine. It was his. It belonged to both of us. But now no longer, everything had changed. I can remember wandering about the house, when I came home from visiting the Kendalls, looking upon it with new eyes, and the dogs, seeing my restlessness, followed me, as uneasy as myself. My old nursery, uninhabited for so long, and now the room where Seecombe’s niece came once a week to mend and sort the linen, took on new meaning. I saw it freshly painted, and my small cricket bat that still stood, cobweb-covered on a shelf among a pile of dusty books, thrown out for rubbish. I had not thought before what memories the room held for me, going in and out of it once in two months perhaps, with a shirt to be repaired, or socks to be darned. Now I wanted it for my own again, a haven of refuge from the outer world. Instead of which it would become an alien place, stuffy, smelling of boiled milk and blankets put to dry, like the living rooms of cottages that I so often visited, where there lived young children. In my imagination I could see them crawling with fretful cries upon the floor, forever bumping heads or bruising elbows; or worse, dragging themselves up upon one’s knees, their faces puckering like monkeys if denied. Oh God, was all this in store for Ambrose?
    Hitherto, when I had thought of my cousin Rachel—which I did but sparingly, brushing her name from my mind as one does all things