The child’s set gaze followed his gesture obediently. David took the little hand in his, and led the owner into the heart of the group. Beulah stepped forward.
“This is your Aunt Beulah, Eleanor, of whom I’ve been telling you.”
“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Aunt Beulah,” the little girl said, as Beulah put out her hand, still uncertainly.
Then the five saw a strange thing happen. The immaculate, inscrutable David—the aristocrat of aristocrats, the one undemonstrative, super-self-conscious 25 member of the crowd, who had been delegated to transport the little orphan chiefly because the errand was so incongruous a mission on which to despatch him—David put his arm around the neck of the child with a quick protecting gesture, and then gathered her close in his arms, where she clung, quivering and sobbing, the unkempt curls straggling helplessly over his shoulder.
He strode across the room where Margaret was still sitting upright in the chaise-lounge, her dove-gray eyes wide, her lips parted.
“Here, you take her,” he said, without ceremony, and slipped his burden into her arms.
“Welcome to our city, Kiddo,” Jimmie said in his throat, but nobody heard him.
Peter, whose habit it was to walk up and down endlessly wherever he felt most at home, paused in his peregrination, as Margaret shyly gathered the rough little head to her bosom. The child met his gaze as he did so.
“We weren’t quite up to scratch,” he said gravely.
Beulah’s eyes filled. “Peter,” she said, “Peter, I didn’t mean to be—not to be—”