David Willis came at that moment from the church, with his books under his arm; he gazed in an absent-minded fashion at the little group, and obviously did not quite know what to make of it all. Uncle Bob came blusteringly to the rescue; shook David heartily by the hand and walked off with him, with a hand clapped confidentially upon his shoulder and his head bent down sideways from his greater height to talk to him. The boy Brian walked along on the other side of his father, glancing back over his shoulder now and then with an engaging smile at Comethup, who followed behind with the captain. The captain was ill at ease and in a bad temper; he puffed out his chest as he walked and breathed heavily under his mustache, and made savage little cuts at the air with his cane, as though it had been a sword.
At the gate leading to the garden Mr. Robert Carlaw parted jovially, shaking David heartily by the hand again, and patting Comethup on the top of his best Sunday cap. In the captain he apparently scented an enemy; they bowed to each other stiffly, and the frown did not leave the captain's face.
"He must come and see us," said Mr. Carlaw, with a jerk of the head toward Comethup. "They'll be company for each other; besides, they're cousins. You're such quiet folks; I declare I'd forgotten your existence--absolutely forgotten it." He went swinging away down the street, with the boy swinging beside him, a curious, almost pathetic imitation of the father.
It had become the captain's habit to dine with David Willis every Sunday--quite a simple, homely dinner of a joint and vegetables and a pudding to follow. The captain walked into the cottage now, sat himself stiffly down in a chair near the window, and drew Comethup against his knee and put his arm about him. David Willis was wandering about the room, softly humming to himself a fragment of the voluntary he had played that morning, while the servant-maid laid the table. It was a hot and breathless summer morning; the window of the little parlour was wide open, and Comethup could hear people passing and repassing in the street beyond the garden; could hear the murmur of their talk. There was a high, old-fashioned mahogany bureau on the other side of the room, with curved brass handles to the drawers, and with three leather-bound books, growing gradually smaller in size upward, like a pyramid, on the top of it. Comethup had never seen either the books or the bureau opened; it was curious, therefore, to see his father, with a smile on his face, stroll across there presently and lift the topmost book and open it. "You didn't know our friend Carlaw was something of a poet, did you?" he asked, addressing the captain.