He had evidently, as yet, noticed nothing himself. Most of his day was spent in the Senate and his counting-house; besides, his interest in other people's lives was not extended to those of his own household. As to his feelings for Ranulph, it must be confessed that he looked upon him more as an heirloom than as a son. In fact, unconsciously, he placed him in the same category as the crystal goblet with which Duke Aubrey's father had baptized the first ship owned by a Chanticleer, or the sword with which his ancestor had helped to turn Duke Aubrey off the throne--objects that he very rarely either looked at or thought about, though the loss of them would have caused him to go half mad with rage and chagrin. However, one evening, early in April, the matter was forced upon his attention in a very painful manner. By this time spring had come to all the world, and the citizens of Lud-in-the-Mist were beginning to organise their life for summer--copper vessels were being cleaned and polished for the coming labours of the still-room, arbours in the gardens swept out and cleaned, and fishing-tackle overhauled; and people began to profit by the longer days by giving supper-parties to their friends. Nobody in Lud-in-the-Mist loved parties more than Master Nathaniel. They were a temporary release. It was as if the tune of his life were suddenly set to a different and gayer key; so that, while nothing was substantially changed, and the same chairs stood in the same places, with people sitting in them that he met every day, and there was even the same small, dull ache in one of his teeth, nevertheless the sting, or rather the staleness, was taken out of it all. So it was very gleefully that he sent invitations to all his cronies to come "and meet a Moongrass cheese"--as he had done every April for the last twenty-five years. Moongrass was a village of Dorimare famous for its cheeses--and rightly so, for to look at they were as beautiful as Parian marble veined with jade, and they had to perfection the flavour of all good cheeses--that blending of the perfume of meadows with the cleanly stench of the byre. It was the Moongrass cheeses that were the subject of the comic advertisement described in a previous chapter. By seven o'clock the Chanticleers' parlour was filled with a crowd of stout, rosy, gaily-dressed guests, chattering and laughing like a flock of paroquets. Only Ranulph was silent; but that was to be expected from a little boy of twelve years old in the presence of his elders. However, he need not have sulked in a corner, nor responded quite so surlily to the jocular remarks addressed him by his father's guests.