“Sure,” said Peter, who had not suffered next to two Americans for nothing.
“I’ve got it in writing,” said Joan.
“I’d rather learn from you than any one,” said she.
Peter discoursed of stunts....
They spent a long golden time revisiting odd corners in which they had played together. They went down the village and up to the church and round the edge of the wood, and there they came upon and devoured a lot of blackberries, and then they went down to the mill pond and sat for a time in Baker’s boat. Then they got at cross purposes about dressing for dinner. Joan wanted to dress very much. She wanted to remind Peter that there were prettier arms in the world than Hetty Reinhart’s, and a better modelled neck and shoulders. She had a new dress of ivory silk with a broad belt of velvet that echoed the bright softness of her eyes and hair. But Peter would not let her dress. He did not want to dress himself. “And you couldn’t look prettier, Joan, than you do in that blue thing. It’s so like you.”
And as Joan couldn’t explain that the frock kept her a jolly girl he knew while the dress would have shown him the beautiful woman he had to discover, she lost that point in the game. And tomorrow was Sunday, when Pelham Ford after the good custom of England never dressed for dinner.
Afterwards she thought how easily she might have overruled him.
Joan’s plans for the evening were dashed by this costume failure. She had relied altogether on the change of personality into something rich and strange, that the ivory dress was to have wrought. She could do nothing to develop the situation. Everything seemed to be helping to intensify her sisterliness. Oswald was rather seedy, and the three of them played Auction Bridge with a dummy. She had meant to sit up with Peter, but it didn’t work out like that.
“Good night, Petah dear,” she said outside her bedroom door with the candlelight shining red between the fingers of her hand.
“Good night, old Joan,” he said from his door-mat, with an infinite friendliness in his voice.