Peter was reluctant to give information. “I know all about ’im,” he said, and would at first throw no other light on the matter.
Then he relented and told a wonder. He turned his back on his brick train and drew close to Aunt Phyllis. His manner was solemn and impressive exactly as Mary’s friend’s had been; his words were as slow and deliberate. “Jesus Krice could go dead and come alive again,” he said, “over and over, whenever He wanted to.”
And having paused a moment to complete the effect of this marvel, Peter turned about again, squatted down like a little brown holland mushroom with a busy little knob on the top, and resumed his shouting. “Hoo! Chuff-Chuff. Chuff-Chuff. Chuff.”
§ 9
One day Mary with an unaccustomed urgency in her manner hurried Joan and Peter out of the garden and into the nursery, and there tidied them up with emphasis. Joan showed fight a bit but not much; Peter was thinking of something else and was just limp. Then Mary took them down to the living-room, the big low room with the ingle-nook and the dining-table in the far bay beside the second fireplace. There they beheld a large female Visitor of the worst sort. They approached her with extreme reluctance, impelled by Mary’s gentle but persistent hand. The Visitor was sitting in the window-seat with Aunt Phyllis beside her. And Aunt Phœbe was standing before the little fireplace. But these were incidental observations; the great fact was the Visitor.
She was the largest lady that Peter had ever seen; she had a plumed hat with black chiffon and large purple bows and a brim of soft black stuff and suchlike things, and she wore a large cape in three tiers and a large black feather boa that hissed when she moved and disseminated feathers. Her shoulders were enormously exaggerated by a kind of vast epaulette, and after the custom of all loyal Anglicans in those days her neck was tightly swathed about and adorned with a big purple bow. Everything she wore had been decorated and sewn upon, and her chequered skirts below were cut out by panels and revelations of flounced purple. In the midst of this costume, beneath the hat and a pale blonde fuss of hair, was set a large, pale, freckled, square-featured face with two hard blue eyes and a fascinating little tussock of sandy hair growing out of one cheek that instantly captured the eye of the little boy. And out of the face proceeded a harsh voice, slow, loud, and pitched in that note of arrogance which was the method of the ruling class in those days. “So these are our little Wards,” said the voice, and as she spoke her lips wrinkled and her teeth showed.
She turned to Phyllis with a confidential air, but spoke still in the same clear tones. “Which is the By-blow, my dear, the Boy or the Gel?”
“Lady Charlotte!” exclaimed Phyllis, and then spoke inaudibly, explaining something.
But Peter made a note of “By-blow.” It was a lovely word.
“Not even in Black. They ought to wear Black,” he heard the big lady say.