“You had once, a great many years ago, a dog called Crumpet. Once in Cornwall ... one Good Friday, he tumbled into a lime-pit. A boy—”
“Why, of course,” she broke in, “I remember you perfectly. Why of all the things! Norah, do you realise? Your friend and I have known each other for eight years. Isn't the world a small place! Why I remember perfectly now!”
She turned and talked to Norah Monogue, and whilst she talked he took her in. Although now she was grown up she was still strangely like that little girl in Cornwall. He realised that now, as he looked at her, he had still something of the same feeling about her as he had had then—that she was some one to be cared for, protected, something fragile that the world might break if she were not guarded.
She was porcelain but without anything of Meredith's “rogue.” Because Peter was strong and burly the contrast of her appealing fragility attracted him all the more. Had she not been so perfectly proportioned her size would have been a defect; but now it was simple that her delicacy of colour and feature demanded that slightness and slenderness of build. Her hair was of so burning a red-gold that its colour gave her precisely the setting that she required. She seemed, as she sat there, a little helpless, and Peter fancied that she was wishing him to understand that she wanted friends who should assist her in rather a rough-and-tumble world. Just as she had once appealed to him to save Crumpet, so now she seemed to appeal for some far greater assistance. Ah! how he could protect her! Peter thought.
Something in Peter's steady gaze seemed suddenly to surprise her. She stopped—the colour mounted into her cheeks—she bent down over the boy.
They were both of them supremely conscious of one another. There was a moment.... Then, as men feel, when some music that has held them ceases, they came, with a sense of breathlessness, back to Norah Monogue and her dim room.
Peter was conscious that Robin had watched them both. He almost, Peter thought, chuckled to himself, in his fat solemn way.
“Miss Rossiter,” Norah Monogue said—and her voice seemed a long way away—“has just come back from Germany and has brought some wonderful photographs with her. She was going to show them to me when you came in—”
“Let me see them too, please,” said Peter.
Robin was put on to the floor and he went slowly and with ceremony to an old brown china Toby that had his place on a little shelf by the door. This Toby—his name was Nathaniel—was an old friend of Robin's. Robin sat on the floor in a corner and told Nathaniel the things about the world that he had noticed. Every now and again he paused for Nathaniel's reply; he was always waiting for him to speak, and the continued silence of a now ancient acquaintance had not shaken Robin's faith.... Robin forgot the rest of the company.