"I don't think that's quite right," said Peters.
"Pa," she observed, with subtle relevancy, "used to say that all s'listers were liars."
"Well, I'm not a solicitor," Peters objected triumphantly.
He remembered two prayers for morning and evening that he had learned when he was a boy. He copied them out in an exquisite hand, with Old English titles, on a sheet of tinted cardboard. Then he ruled a frame round them—three thin red lines within a broad black line. He was proud of his work. He presented it to Elsa. The wayward Elsa chose to be pleased with it, and owned that Peters wrote better than she did. She took the card away to her room at once—"to try them," she explained.
Peters found himself very dull indeed when Elsa had gone. He thought it over, and concluded that he was a man who needed companionship. One night he wrote a long letter—not a love-letter—to Flynders's cousin's second daughter, and posted it; he got no reply, and a few months afterwards he read in Mrs Marks's newspaper the announcement that Flynders's cousin's second daughter had married the curate.
"She was always one for social success," Peters reflected.
He wrote to Elsa, and she also did not answer—she had explained to him that he must not expect it, because she disliked writing letters. He sent her every year a birthday card (with a present), a Christmas card (also with a present), and a valentine. She sent him, so far as he knew, nothing at all; but one year he received a very ugly valentine, an insulting valentine. He thought that it must have come either from Elsa or from that young clerk who had lent him the really spicy novel.
One day that young clerk seemed almost friendly to Peters. "You're a lonely old chap," he said to him in the luncheon hour. "Why don't you buy a dog? It would be a companion to you." Peters thought it rather a good idea. As it happened, the young clerk had one that he wanted to sell; he described it as a faithful, pure-bred, sweet-tempered fox-terrier. It's name was Tommy. Peters bought it, and its kennel was located under the plane tree.
Tommy liked almost everyone except Peters. He would follow anyone except Peters. If he was in the mood to snap at anybody, he preferred to snap at Peters. Mrs Marks (under a special pecuniary arrangement) agreed to wash the dog. But she soon pleaded for the use of a muzzle on those occasions.