“Not half. Came from Rapson. That’s what comes of sticking to your friends. That’s why I say that your Aunt wasn’t always wiser than the poor old knacker.” “Mines?” “So he said. He’s been to see me since then. The way your Aunt Lavinia treated him was as funny as a cock without feathers.--I always believed in Rapson.--He had a bad streak though.” “Which one?” He passed over my slur. “Women.” “Kitty?” “That’s what I meant. He’s sorry now; wishes he’d married her.” “Humph! If you don’t make your place pay, what are you doing?” His face took on an expression of intense earnestness. “Breeding the Spreckles. Remember them, don’t you? I had terrible work at first; couldn’t make the strain permanent; in the third and fourth generations it was always going back to the original crossings. Well, now I’ve done it. Come and look at ’em.” The old bond was established. His enthusiasm and my response to it swept aside the misunderstandings of years. I seemed a little boy, following him into a retreat of impossible glamour. He showed me a pen of magnificent slate-blue fowls; they had the extra toe of the Dorking, the drooping comb of the Leghorn, yellow legs of the Game, and full plump body of the Plymouth Rock. He enumerated their merits, insisted that I should guess what mixings of blood had gone to their making, and was delighted when he found I had not forgotten the old knowledge he had taught me. He was going to enter them at the shows this year, but he was worried over one point--what name should he call them? “But you’ve given them their name.” “I know, I know, old chap; but my conscience troubles me. Yer see, I shouldn’t have been able to do it if it hadn’t been for Rapson. I think I ought to call ’em the _Rapsons_.” “If you feel like that, why don’t you?” “He won’t let me.” “Share the glory then. Call ’em _Spreckles_ in public, and _Rapsons_ among ourselves.” His simple old face lit up. “Believe you’ve solved it.” We returned to our place by the shed, from which we could watch the haze of evening drifting across the billowy uplands. In the village at our feet, cattle were being driven home lowing to the milking. On the common boys were playing cricket; their laughter came to us softened by distance. “What made you ask me?” I said. “Ask you? Ask you what?” “To come and visit you.” “Why shouldn’t I?” “I don’t know. But I’m not popular at Pope Lane at present; I believe you know the reason. Grandmother Cardover must have told Aunt Lavinia that this was going to happen. That was why you sent that letter to the ship to meet me.” He looked shy and awkward, and drew his hat down over his brows; I knew that he was making up his mind not to answer. “When I was a boy,” I continued, “I always felt that I could come to you frankly. You, somehow, understood before anything had been said. I thought, perhaps, you might have understood this time, and that that was why you asked me.”