Rosalind had still to get usedto the fact that she
was Mrs.
And at that a mysterious catastrophe befell
theThorburns. Thus time passed; one year; two years of time. Dont talk such rubbish,
Rosalind, he said.
The cries of BondStreet came in; the purr of the
distant traffic.
That was only natural, sheexplained, seeing how
they lived.
Shewaved her hand at the stars that were beginning
to show over the trees.
She paused as if she were up in the tower looking
from the window thatswung open.
Yes; thats what shes called, said
Rosalind.
It musthave been about then that my
greatgrandfather was a boy.
The stars seemed very permanent,
veryunchanging.
It rippled, it ran withsuccessive
twitches.
Rosalind exclaimed, as if she had been expecting
this.
He was King Lappin; shewas Queen
Lapinova.
There they lived, shewent on, the old man, the
woman and the boy. He focussedit upon a dark mass of wood upon the horizon. She was
just a farm hand, a girl the old man had takento live with him when his wife
died.
She laid her plump padded finger across her
lips.
It wasunpleasant that the sense of his goodness
should boil within him. King Lappin, she added,dangling her little front paws in the
firelight.
Brunner piped up, how it was alldue to him they
felt. Hammondflattened himself against the wall. I have done more for my kind in
oneday than the rest of you in all your lives.
Lappin, Lappin, King Lappin, she
repeated.
Miss OKeefe was muddled and annoyed; she wasmuddy
instead of clear.
Nothing but moor and sky, moor and sky, for ever
and ever, shemurmured. He must stay, he must stay until he had justifiedhimself. Its
because youre like a rabbit, Ernest, she said.
Shewaved her hand at the stars that were beginning
to show over the trees.
A hunting rabbit; a King Rabbit; arabbit that makes
laws for all the other rabbits.
Peeping between thechrysanthemums she saw Ernests
nose twitch. She would have preferred Timothy, Antony, or Peter.