"I care a great deal too much for my own peace of mind," said Jan.
"I am quite satisfied," said Peter. And if Mr. Withells had seen what happened to the "sensible" Miss Ross just then, his neatly-brushed hair would have stood straight on end.
In the road, too!
CHAPTER XXVII
AUGUST, 1914
"NO," said Jan, "it would be like marrying a widow ... with encumbrances."
"But you don't happen to be a widow—besides, if you were, and had a dozen encumbrances, if we want to get married it's nobody's business but our own."
Peter spoke testily. He wanted Jan to marry him before he went back to India in October, and if he got the billet he hoped for, to follow him, taking the two children out, early in November.
But Jan saw a thousand lions in the way. She was pulled in this direction and that, and though she knew she had got to depend on Peter to—as she put it—"a dreadful extent," yet she hesitated to saddle him with her decidedly explosive affairs, without a great deal more consideration than he seemed disposed to allow her.
Hugo, for the present, was quiet. He was in Guernsey with his people, and beyond a letter in which he directly accused Peter Ledgard of abducting Tony when his father was taking him to visit his grandparents, Jan had heard nothing.