Yet he merely looked at me with his trust-me-and-test-me expression.
“I’ll chance it!” he said, after a quite contented moment or two of meditative silence.
“But don’t you see,” I went forlornly arguing on, “it mustn’t be a chance. That’s something people of our age can never afford to take.”
And Peter, at that, for some reason I couldn’t 380 fathom, began to wag his head. He did it slowly and lugubriously, like a man who inspects a road he has no liking for. But at the same time, apparently, he was finding it hard to tuck away a small smile of triumph.
“Then we must never see each other again,” he solemnly asserted.
“Peter!” I cried.
“I must go away, at once,” he meditatively observed.
“Peter!” I said again, with the flute turning into a pair of ice-tongs that clamped into the corners of my heart.
“Far, far away,” he continued as he studiously avoided my eye. “For there will be safety now only in flight.”
“Safety from what?” I demanded.