He stretched up his hand and stroked Benjy, and Anne felt the rabbit's
heart beat sharp and quick against her breast. A shiver went through
Benjy's body.
Anne kissed him again. Her heart swelled and shook with maternal
tenderness.
"Why does he tremble so?"
"He's frightened. Don't touch him, Col-Col."
Colin couldn't see an animal without wanting to stroke it. He put his
hands in his pockets to keep them out of temptation. By the way Jerrold
looked at him you saw how he loved him.
About Colin there was something beautiful and breakable. Dusk-white
face; little tidy nose and mouth; dark hair and eyes like the minnows
swimming under the green water. But Jerrold's face was strong; and he
had funny eyes that made you keep looking at him. They were blue. Not
tiresomely blue, blue all the time, like his mother's, but secretly and
surprisingly blue, a blue that flashed at you and hid again, moving
queerly in the set squareness of his face, presenting at every turn a
different Jerrold. He had a pleasing straight up and down nose, his one
constant feature. The nostrils slanted slightly upward, making shadows
there. You got to know these things after watching him attentively. Anne
loved his mouth best of all, cross one minute (only never with Colin),
sweet the next, tilted at the corners, ready for his laughter.
He stood close beside her in his white flannels, straight and slender.
He was looking at her, just as he looked at Colin.
"Do you like him?" he said.
"Who? Colin?"
"No. Benjy."
"I _love_ him."
"I'll give him to you if you'd like to have him."
"For my own? To keep?"
"Rather."
"Don't you want him?"
"Yes. But I'd like you to have him."
"Oh, Jerrold."
She knew he was giving her Benjy because her mother was dead.
"I've got the grey doe, and the fawn, and the lop-ear," he said.
"Oh--I _shall_ love him."
"You mustn't hold him too tight. And you must be careful not to touch
his stomach. If you squeeze him there he'll die."
"Yes. If you squeeze his stomach he'll die," Colin cried excitedly.
"I'll be ever so careful."
They put him down, and he ran violently round and round, drumming with
his hind legs on the floor of the shed, startling the does that couched,
like cats, among the lettuce leaves and carrots.
"When the little rabbits come half of them will be yours, because he'll
be their father."