“Yes, she’s homesick,” Peter said gravely, “but not for anything she’s left in Colhassett. David told you the story, didn’t he?—She is homesick for her own kind, for people she can really love, and she’s never found any of them. Her grandfather and grandmother are old and decrepit. She feels a terrible responsibility for them, but she doesn’t love them, not really. She’s too hungry to love anybody until she finds the friends she can cling to—without compromise.”
“An emotional aristocrat,” Gertrude murmured. “It’s the curse of taste.”
“Help! Help!” Jimmie cried, grimacing at Gertrude. 43 “Didn’t she have any kids her own age to play with?”
“She had ’em, but she didn’t have any time to play with them. You forget she was supporting a family all the time, Jimmie.”
“By jove, I’d like to forget it.”
“She had one friend named Albertina Weston that she used to run around with in school. Albertina also wrote poetry. They used to do poetic ‘stunts’ of one poem a day on some subject selected by Albertina. I think Albertina was a snob. She candidly admitted to Eleanor that if her clothes were more stylish, she would go round with her more. Eleanor seemed to think that was perfectly natural.”
“How do you do it, Peter?” Jimmie besought. “If I could get one damsel, no matter how tender her years, to confide in me like that I’d be happy for life. It’s nothing to you with those eyes, and that matinée forehead of yours; but I want ’em to weep down my neck, and I can’t make ’em do it.”
“Wait till you grow up, Jimmie, and then see what happens,” Gertrude soothed him.
“Wait till it’s your turn with our child,” Margaret 44 said. “In two months more she’s coming to you.”
“Do I ever forget it for a minute?” Jimmie cried.