“Please go away,” he said, still in the same low voice, and Victoria left him.
She returned in a short time to find him still in the same position. When she spoke to him he did not reply, and though she went again and again, it was always with the same result.
“What are we to do with him?” she said later to her sisters. “He won’t speak, and he just lies there with his face turned away. If he would only cry about it!”
“Peter won’t cry,” said Sophy. “He thinks it’s babyish. He was awful fond of Sirius, though. I’ve seen him kiss him often, on the top of his head, and he never likes to kiss anybody else. Oh dear, I wish I could do something to make him feel better!” The loving little sister’s eyes filled with tears, and she hid her face in Honor’s shoulder.
“The trouble is,” said Victoria, “he thinks we’re only girls and so he won’t talk to us. If father were here, or Mr. Abbott, it would be better. I really believe Peter would speak to them. If we only had somebody!”
It was unusual for Victoria’s courage to desert her, but it had all been very sad and depressing. Peter’s accident had unnerved her, and the subsequent dread of breaking the news to him, and then the disclosure itself, had been more of a strain than she realized.
“I wish we had an older brother!” she said, and then greatly to the surprise of the others she too began to cry. “What a goose I am!” she sobbed. “But I do feel so sorry for Peter and for all of us, and I wish he would speak to us.”
“I wonder if Mr. Madison would come and talk to him,” suggested Katherine.
“We can’t ask him to,” said Honor, quickly. “We must never ask him to do a thing. He would be the very one, I’ve no doubt, for Peter likes him, and he was the one who saved his life and was there when Sirius was killed, but it would never do to ask him. If he were to come of his own accord, it would be different.”
“It seems a great pity, then, that he can’t know how much he is needed,” said Katherine. “He seems to be the kind of man who always knows exactly what to say, and he is so good-natured he wouldn’t mind coming a bit. Do you really think, Honor, that it wouldn’t do to ask him?”