An awful suggestion! He pictured the dining-room flooded with his tears, the furniture floating and Grace swimming for her life. He turned off the tap to just the littlest dribble. If he’d stopped at once, Grace would have ceased to be sorry.
She did not keep her promise to take care of him. On the contrary, she conducted him through London on the tops of buses and left him at a strange house. It belonged to the “smacking lady,” a name which he had given to Jehane since an unfortunate occurrence previously mentioned. He had been taught to call her Auntie to her face, but she went by the other name inside his head.
On many points his memories of this period are muddled. When he was not in disgrace, he was allowed to play with Glory; if he had been specially good, he was privileged to splash in the same bath with her before being put to bed. But this was not often; it appeared that quite suddenly, since coming to the smacking lady’s house, he had developed an extraordinary faculty for being bad. She said that he was spoilt, and shut him up in rooms to make him better. He did his best to improve, for he believed that his naughtiness was the cause of his mother’s absence; she would never come back, unless he became “the goodest little boy in the world.” To judge by the smacking lady’s countenance, he did his best to no purpose.
Her man was the one bright spot in his tragedy; and even he seemed a little afraid of her. He did not champion Peter in her presence, but he would take him out of rooms—oh, so stealthily—and carry him to the end of the garden where a river ran, along the floor of which fishes flashed, pursued by their shadows. There he would tell him funny stories—stories of Peter’s world and within the compass of Peter’s understanding; and he would laugh first to warn Peter when he was going to be really funny——
Peter had again been bad, shut up in a room and rescued by the smacking lady’s husband. They were sitting on the river-bank, screened from the windows of the house by bushes, when they heard the sound of running. It was the servant; she spoke loudly with excitement and seemed out of breath. The funny man’s face became grave; he rose and left Peter without a word.
After that, all kinds of people came hurrying; they banged on the door and went swiftly up the stairs—swiftly and softly. No one paid him any heed and, strange to say, they were equally careless of Glory. He was glad of that, for he loved Glory; it made him happy to have her to himself. All that day they played among the flowers, he following the shining of her little golden head. When she fell asleep tired, he sat solemnly beside her, holding her crumpled hand.
That night they were hastily undressed by a stranger and tumbled into the same bed. She was so strange that she did not know that she ought to hear them say their prayers. It was Peter who reminded her.
Lying awake in the darkness, he was sensitive that something unusual was happening. Up and down the creaking stairs many footsteps came and went; dresses rustled; voices muttered in whispered consultation. In intervals between doors opening and shutting, there were long periods of silence. During one of these he heard a sound so curious that he sat up in bed—a weak, thin wailing which was new to him and, had he known it, new to the world. He gathered the bed-clothes to his mouth and listened. Voices on the stairs grew bolder—almost glad. Peter was conscious of relief from suspense; night itself grew less black.
Again a door opened on the lower landing; there were footsteps. A man spoke cheerfully. “It’s all over and successfully. Thank God for that.”
And the smacking lady’s husband roared, “A little nipper all my own, by Gad!”