Her sister turned.
"Why, lass," she said calmly, "I's been looking for thee high and low. Come home, Lucy, come away home."
The girl clung to her with both hands, sobbing:
"I's been baited like yon beast, Barbara. Oh! I's wounded and sick and weary. I's been hurt by the hands I kissed, and life's dark as a cloudy night."
CHAPTER IX
Peter at Oxford
Peter Fleming sat by his study window, looking down into the quadrangle. It was early morning, so early that stars still glimmered round Saint Mary the Virgin's spire and over the Radcliffe Camera. Candles burnt dimly in the room at his back, and on the table, spotted with wine stains, lay the remains of supper. All the guests, but one, had gone, and he was only a voice, for the window curtains swallowed him up. To him Peter unburdened his soul; upon such an occasion, at such an hour as this, men are not afraid to speak of themselves.
Peter's college career was ended. Last night he had set the seal to it; this morning he was entering upon a new phase.
"You are not ambitious," said the voice—a mature voice, lacking the boyish note that rang so triumphantly off Peter's tongue, as though he were confident of conquering the world—"It's a pity; I always thought you were! With your honours it's monstrous, that you should turn school-master to your native vale, content with—how much?"