Where was the man’s proper pride, Miss Esther wondered disapprovingly. Well, well, she supposed it was her duty to put them up for a day or two. One couldn’t let people starve; it wasn’t done; and really, that impossible little person in the red cap looked nothing but skin and bone. Miss Esther offered to show the bride to her room. And added a silent determination to draw special attention to the cake of soap on the washstand.
“Run along, Chavvy,” quoth Chavvy’s lord and master.
She hung back and pouted. Then went slowly forward to meet hostility, awaiting her at the threshold.
“Won’t you,” she faltered, “won’t you try to love me just a little?”
Upon this she made her exit. The door closed behind the twain, leaving Miss Esther’s reply to the imagination.
Peter crossed to the fireplace, lit a cigarette, and stood looking down upon the man in the arm-chair. Noted with pity that the topmost hairs of his head were thinning considerably. Otherwise his florid good looks seemed in no danger from the years. With a certain shock of surprise, she realized how akin they were, he and she; adventurers both, play-actors both; though, lacking her burden of pride, his passage through the world was even more divinely unhampered.
“Hadn’t you better tell me all about it?” she suggested.
When Bertram’s reply came, it was still tinged with borrowed reflections from Mr. Lorrimer, Parent.
“I’ve been a good deal by myself, my dear girl; you don’t seem to realize what the loss of your poor mother meant to me. And you, who might have been a solace and a companion, you preferred to live here in comfort and luxury. I was—lonely. And when this child Chavvy crept into my life, I let her remain, to fill the gap my daughter might have filled.”
Peter thought it over. “No,” she said at length, very gently, “I don’t think that will do. Try again.”