There is rest for me.”
It almost made him cry to hear her. He was beginning to know just a little of that need for rest.
A door opened. The singing came out. To his astonishment Peter saw Miss Leah approaching. Up to now she had never left her room to his knowledge. She beckoned. Then she spoke in that hoarse voice of hers. “I heard her tell Florence that you’re in trouble. You’re too young to know sorrow. That comes surely. But for you not yet.”
She placed her thin hand on his shoulder and drew him with her into the room where the blinds were always lowered. Closing the door, she searched his face. “You have the look. Sorrow! Sorrow! I have suffered and can understand. Don’t be afraid. Tell me.”
And he told her—he never knew why or how. She listened, rocking to and fro in her chair, with her dim eyes fixed upon him. When he paused for a word she nodded encouragement, pulling her woolen shawl tighter round her narrow shoulders.
“And in spite of that you love him?—You’re like a woman, Peter. You love people for their faults and in defiance of common sense. And you refuse to think he’s bad?”
“He’s not really,” said Peter. “The world’s not been good to him.”
“Not really!” She spoke reflectively, as though she groped beneath the words. “No, we’re never bad really—only seem bad to other people till they make us seem bad to ourselves.—Yes, you can bring him.”
But to bring him Peter needed Mr. Grace’s help, and Mr. Grace had been so candid in saying that “‘e weren’t worf it.”
When he reached the cab-stand, Mr. Grace wasn’t there. He had waited an hour before he saw Cat’s Meat crawl out of the traffic.