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 Cos you won't tell me."

"Tell you what?" Renny held him as in a vice.

"You know what."

"How can I know if you won't tell me?"

"Oh, you beast, Renny! It's you who won't tell me!"

"Tell you what?"

"Whether you have a—you know what—for me."

Renny closed his eyes. "You sound half-witted this morning," he said, coldly. "It seems a pity, when you've reached such an age."

Wakefield examined his brother's hard, weather-bitten visage with its relentless-looking nose. Certainly it was a forbidding face. A face that belonged to a man who was his adored brother and who had no birthday present for him.

He, too, closed his eyes, murmuring to himself: "Oh, this is terrible!" A tear trickled down his cheek and fell on Renny's wrist.

The elder Whiteoak gave the younger a little shake. "Cut that out," he said. They looked into each other's eyes.

"It nearly broke me."

"What did, Renny?"

"Why, the present."

"The present?"

"Rather. The birthday present."

"Oh, Renny, for God's sake—"

"Stop your swearing."

"But what is it?"

"It's," he plunged the word into Wake's ear, "a pony—a beautiful Welsh pony."

After the first ecstatic questions, Wake lay silent, floating in a golden haze of happiness. He did not want to miss the savor of one lovely moment of this day of days. First a pony, then a picnic, and in between, an orgy of