"He needs a bath," Anne observed coldly, and Peter's abrupt shout of laughter made Alix flush angrily.
"Bring your cigarette out here, Peter," the old doctor said, crossing the garden to look in the abandoned greenhouse for his rope. "We're in no hurry," he said. "We may as well wait until Lloyd comes along; the fellow's arms are like flails. You---" the old man opened a reluctant door, peered into a glassed space filled with muddy shelves and empty flower-pots and spiderwebs. "It's not here," he stated. Then he began again, "You brought Cherry home last night?" he asked.
"As a matter of fact, I didn't," Peter answered, in his quick, precise tones. "I came with Lloyd and Cherry as far as the bridge, then I cut up the hill. Why?" he added sharply. "What's up?"
"Nothing's up," Doctor Strickland said slowly. "But I think that Lloyd admires--or is beginning to admire--her," he said.
"Who--Cherry!" Peter exclaimed, with distaste and incredulity in his tone.
"You don't think so?" the doctor, looking at him wistfully, asked eagerly.
"Why, certainly not!" Peter said quickly. "Certainly not," he added, frowning, with his eyes narrowed, and his look fixed upon the vista of woodland.
"I had a fancy that he might have been putting notions into her head," her father said, anxious to be reassured.
"But--great Scott!" Peter said, his face very red, "she's much younger than Anne and Alix--"
"It doesn't always go by that," the doctor suggested.