Читать книгу The House of Fulfilment - George Madden Martin - Страница 8

Table of Contents

“Your initials spell Mab,” King William was telling Alexina as they sat on the step; “that means you’ll be rich. Mine don’t spell anything. I’m named for my grandfather up in Woodford, William Ransome. He’s dead. Father’s don’t either—Georges Gautier Hippolyte Leroy. His father ran away from France because he was a Girondist, and came to Louisville because it was French, and father’s been to Paris, too; haven’t you, father?”

The gentleman thus adjured removed his cigar and addressed his wife. “It begins to amount to garrulity. If the opposite sex produces this at ten, what are we to expect later on?”

Mrs. Leroy’s voice had a note of defence in it, as if she could not brook even humorous criticism of the boy. It was plain where the passionate ardour in her nature was centred.

“I’m glad, I’m glad to see it,” she declared. “I was afraid it was not in him, I was beginning to fear he was a self-sufficient little monster.”

But her son was continuing the family history. “Mother’s name was Charlotte Ransome; wasn’t it, mother? When I’m a man I’m going to buy my grandfather’s stock farm back, and we’ll live there; won’t we, mother?”

But the impulsive Charlotte, veering around, here took her husband’s side: “‘I’m going to—I’m going to,’” she mimicked the boy, then began to chant derisively as in words familiar to both: