Surely it was a blameless and legitimate manner, even for a married man, of spending the idle moments which belonged properly to the days of his bachelorhood! Still, he did not confide this harmless secret of his to Sophia; he might tell her when it was all over, but not so long as her disapproval could affect his plans. And he had an instinct that such a story as he had to tell would fail to appeal to a person of her accurately logical habit of mind.
So, on one occasion when he discovered that he had lost one of the loose cheques he now carried constantly about with him, it was with a feeling very like panic that he reflected that he might have dropped it about the house, where its unusual form would inevitably provoke Sophia's curiosity; and he was much reassured when he was able to conclude, from the fact that she made no reference to it, that he must have lost it out of doors.
It must have been some time after this before his serenity again met with a slight shock: he was walking up and down the deck with Miss Davenport—it happened to be one of the days when he knew her very well indeed.
"Sometimes," she was saying, "I feel as if I must speak to somebody!"
"You know where you will always find a very willing listener!" he said, with a kind of fatherly floweriness that he felt sat well upon him.
"I didn't mean you," she said,—"to some girl of my own age, I meant."
"Oh!" said Peter, "well, that's a very natural feeling, I'm sure. I can quite understand it!"
"Then you wouldn't mind—you wouldn't be angry if I did?" she said, looking up at him with her great childishly serious eyes.
"My dear child," said Peter, getting more fatherly every moment, "how could I possibly object to your speaking to any lady on board if you want to?"
He would have liked to make one or two exceptions, perhaps; but he thought he had better not.