“It's that lion—the one the lady had—I want it.”
“You can't have it—the lady's got it.”
“Well—take me to see them—the real ones—there are lots somewhere Mother says.” Robin inserted his very small hand into Peter's large one.
“All right, one day—we'll go to the 'Zoo.”
Robin sighed with satisfaction—he lay down and murmured sleepily to himself, “I love Mister Peter and lions and Mother and God,” and was suddenly asleep.
Peter bent down over the cot and kissed him. He felt miserably wretched. He had known nothing like it since that day when he had said good-bye to his mother. He wondered that he could ever have felt any exultation; he wondered that writing and glory and ambition could ever have seemed worth anything to him at all. Could he have had his prayer granted he would have prayed that he might always stay in Brockett's, always have these same friends, watch over Robin as he grew up, talk to Norah Monogue—and then all the others ... and Mr. Zanti. He felt fourteen years old ... more miserable than he had ever been.
He kissed Robin again—then he went down to find Mrs. Brockett. Here, too, he was faced with an unexpected difficulty. The good lady, listening to him sternly in her grim little sitting-room, refused to hear of his departure. She sat upright in her stiff chair, her thin black dress in folds about her, the gas-light shining on her neatly parted hair.
“You see, Mrs. Brockett,” he explained to her, “I'm no longer in the same position. I can't be sure of my two pounds a week any more and so it wouldn't be right for me to live in a place like this.”
“If it's expense that you're thinking about,” she answered him grimly, “you're perfectly welcome to stay on here and pay me when you can. I'm sure that one day with so clever a young man—”
“That's awfully good of you, Mrs. Brockett, but of course I couldn't hear of anything like that.” For the third time that evening he had to fight against a disposition to blow his nose and be absurd. They were, both of them, increasingly grim with every word that they spoke and any outside observer would have supposed that they were the deadliest of enemies.