"Mother!" he cried. "Mother! Oh, Gee! This is great!" and he kissed her cheeks and her hands, and then her cheeks again, all the while making strange, small, fond noises like a little boy who comes back home after the holidays.
"Oh, dear, dear Peter!" said the little woman, between tears and laughter. "How splendidly rough you are! You shake me to pieces! Where shall I be able to tidy my hair?"
Then, with a rather constrained air and a touch of nervous cordiality, Peter turned to his father and took his hand. "How are you, father?" he asked. "You look fine."
Dr. Hunter Guthrie swallowed something and gave a murmur which remained incoherent. Before he could pull himself together, Peter was hugging his sister, who squealed like a pig from the tightness of this man's mighty grasp. And then the brother came in for it and winced with pain and pleasure as his hand was taken in a vise-like grip.
"Hello, Graham!"
"Hello, Peter!"
And then everybody except Peter burst out laughing. He stood in front of the fair girl, with his mouth wide open, and held out his hand and said: "I was going to hunt the whole place for you,—I beg your pardon." It was when he drew back, with his face and neck the color of a beet root, that the laughter reached its climax.
Belle Guthrie was the first to find her voice. "Well, Peter," she said, "that's going some. Is an introduction superfluous in Oxford? Where did you meet Betty Townsend?"
"I haven't met her," said Peter. "I saw her this morning in the High for a second—" He ran his finger round his collar and moved from one foot to the other and shifted his great shoulders. No man on this earth had ever looked so uncomfortable.
And then, with consummate coolness, Betty Townsend came to the rescue. "Just after we arrived this morning," she said, "and you were all buying picture post-cards, I passed Mr. Guthrie when I was walking along the High Street with Graham's friend. I recognized him from the photographs that you have at home, and I think he must have heard me ask, 'Who's that?' I naturally gave him a friendly look. That's all."