CHAPTER XXII—CAT’S MEAT LOOKS ROUND
Peter kept awake for his parents’ home-coming. Long before the cab drew up he heard the jingle of the horse’s harness and was out of bed. The key grated in the front door; in the silence it sounded to Peter as though the old house cleared its throat, getting ready to tell. Leaning out across the banisters with bare feet shivering against the cold linoleum, he lost little of what was said.
Grace met his father and mother in the hall. “Why, Grace, you ought to have been asleep two hours. I thought I told you not to wait up for us.”
“And you did, mam. So you did. But after the disturbance that we’ve ‘ad——” Her voice sank to a mumbling monotone.
Then his father spoke. “I never heard anything more absurd.—Can’t be away for a single evening without a stupid affair like this happening. Lights in the stable, indeed! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. And you a grown woman! I wonder what next!”
Grace was boo-hooing. “H’I’ll never do it again. I did think I saw ‘em. No one’ll know abart it. Mr. Somp won’t tell.”
“Oh, go upstairs. The children’ll be frightened for months now.”
Peter heard Grace come up to bed sobbing. Where would his wrong-doing end? Romance had had a broom thrown at her; Grace had received a scolding. The injustice was spreading. He examined the stain on his heart in much the same way that Lady Macbeth looked at the stain on her hands. Would it ever be clean again? “Never,” he told himself in his desperation, “never.”