"I do. I do. I call you a very nice boy. If anybody says you're not a nice boy he'll hear from me. I won't have it. I say you're a very nice boy. You're a pretty boy, too, in this light, with your lock hanging over your forehead and your eyes bright. You've got an underfed, aye, a starved look. But you've got the Court nose, and that's something to go on. Life will never down you altogether when you've got that nose. You're not afraid of life, are you?" She peered up at him, with so understanding a look in her deep old eyes that Finch was startled into saying: "Yes, I am. I'm awfully afraid of it."
She reared her head from the pillow. "Afraid of life! What nonsense. A Court afraid of life! I won't have it. You mustn't be afraid of life. Take it by the horns. Take it by the tail. Grasp it where the hair is short. Make it afraid of you. That's the way I did. Do you think I'd have been here talking to you this night—if I'd been afraid of life? Look at this nose of mine. These eyes. Do they look afraid of life? And my mouth—when my teeth are in—it's not afraid either!"
He sat on the side of the bed, stroking her hand. "You're a wonderful woman, Gran. You're twice the man I'll ever be."
"Don't say that. Give yourself time. Mother's milk hardly dry on your lips yet. . . . How's that music? I hear you thumping away at it. Coming on?"
"Pretty well, Gran." He stopped stroking her hand and held it tightly in both of his. "There's nothing I like quite so much."
Her arched eyebrows went up. "Really! Well, well, I expect you get that from your poor mother. She was always tra-la-la-ing about the house."
He closed his eyes, picturing his mother singing about that house. He said, in a low voice: "I wish she had lived, Gran."
Her fingers tightened on his. "No, no. Don't say that. She wasn't fit to cope with life. She was one of those people who are always better dead—if you know what I mean."
