"Sure, I'm satisfied!" he answered. "She didn't go into town to lunch with any one?" he asked.
"No!" Alix said, scornfully. "She always lunches with us! You don't deserve her, to talk so about her, Martin!" she said.
"Well, I'm not anybody's fool, you know!" he assured her. "All right, I'll take your say-so for it." He yawned, "Trouble with Cherry is, she hasn't enough to do!" he finished, sapiently.
"I'm a poor person with whom to discuss Cherry!" Alix hinted, with an unsmiling nod for good-night.
And she looked at Cherry's corn-coloured head, ten minutes later, with a thrill of maternal protectiveness. Cherry was evidently asleep, buried deep under the blue army blankets. But Alix did not get to sleep that night.
She did not even undress. For it was while sitting on the side of her bed, ready to begin the process, that through her excited and indignant and whirling thoughts the first suspicion shot like a touch of flame.
"How dares Martin--how dares he!" her thoughts had run. And then suddenly she had said: "Why, she has seen no one but Peter--she has seen no one but Peter!
"I'll tell Peter all this when Martin has gone," Alix decided. "He'll be furious--he adores Cherry--he'll be furious--he thinks that there is no one like Cherry--"
The words she had said came back to her, and she said them again, half-aloud, with a look of pain and almost of fear suddenly coming into her eyes.
"Peter adores Cherry--"