“We’d better turn back to meet him,” quoth Merle, springing from her perch on the gate. “It’s all right, Peter. Nothing can happen to Stuart, ever.”
But Peter had just learnt of something extremely disturbing which had happened to herself. And venting her indignation at the discovery, upon the cause thereof, refused to fall sobbing upon his neck, when he met them on the homeward way, and carelessly returned her headgear. Nor did she take outward and visible notice of bleeding abrasions upon either knee, ostentatiously displayed. But Merle—feeling his recent performance ought really not to be encouraged—treated him to a sober lecture on foolhardiness, which lasted till Peter provided distraction by leaving her right leg, as far as the thigh, in a bog of black mud.
The sun was a level blaze of gold in their eyes, by the time they trudged up the last slope, and into their fortress. They were weary with a splendid weariness of limb; and drowsy with the strangeness of that strange land; and, moreover, wind-blown and wet and satiated of beauty. Peter entered her room, and closed the door; pulled down the blind to give respite from the outside world; plunged her hands in water, and cast off her shoes and stockings. Then flung herself on the narrow bed, where Merle presently joined her. And they ate of the expensive chocolates destined for Mistress Dorothy Orson, and were at peace.
... Somebody whistling, now loudly, now softly, up and down the passages and stairs. “Yo-ho! Yo-ho!”—it was Captain Hook’s celebrated ditty haunting the Ocean Hotel. Nearing their door, it paused on a plaintive up-note of enquiry. Peter took pity on the homeless wanderer, and before Merle could protest, called him in.
“I don’t think I’ve got an apartment of my own,” said Stuart, squatting contentedly on the floor, his head against Merle’s dark shower of loosened hair. “I slept somewhere, I suppose, but where is a mystery. They must have turned my room into a step-ladder or a revolving book-case; I shall hate sleeping to-night in a revolving book-case; one would get so giddy.” He glanced around him and broke into a chuckle: “What a setting for one of Zola’s most squalid bits of realism,” he remarked.
The room was small, with a dingy paper, and an unclothed gas-jet springing from the wall. The blind that shut out daylight, and dimmed the corners to mystery, was torn, and the cord flapped a perpetual complaint. The tin basin on the washstand stood unemptied of its dirty water. Two or three towels lay across the chairs; Peter’s muddy shoes and stockings straggled in abandoned fashion over the worn bits of carpet covering the oilcloth. The aspect of the two huddled bare-legged figures on the crumpled bed-spread, carried out Stuart’s simile with remarkable fidelity; and his own presence, combined with the dainty satin bonbonnière, added just those last touches of immorality without which no French novel is complete. Only their moods of serene happiness were rather at variance with the puppets of fiction, evil or perhaps merely hopeless, with which Zola might have peopled the dreary chamber.
“I think, as pirates, and considering Merle lives in Lancaster Gate and owns a maid, we deserve a better nursery than this,” suggested Peter.
“We’ll build one,” Stuart assured her swiftly. “Yes, of course we will. Nothing easier. We’ll build it to suit ourselves. A playroom——”
“A piratical playroom——”
“The perfect piratical playroom.”