"Peter, dear, you must give me more time. I haven't really faced it all. I can't do anything in such a hurry as that."
Peter looked at her and shook his head.
"You don't know what caring is," he said. "I can't stand any more of this. Do you see that motto on the sun-dial: 'I bide my time'—I've read it and read it, and I've said it over to myself and waited and hoped to move you. Now I can't wait any more."
He kissed her, dropped her hand, and turning from her went out through the iron gate and down the drive. For a moment Jan stood by the sun-dial as though she, too, were stone.
Then blindly she went up the steps into the empty nursery and sat down on an old sofa far back in the room. She leaned face-downward against the cushions, and great, tearing sobs broke from her.
Peter was gone. He would never come back. She had driven him from her. And having done so she realised that he was the one person in the world she could not possibly do without.
Tony's own hen had laid an egg. Carrying it very carefully in a cabbage-leaf, he went, accom
panied by the faithful William, to show it to Auntie Jan, and was just in time to see Peter going down the drive.
He went through the wrens' garden and in by the window. For a moment he didn't see his aunt; and was turning to go again when a strange sound arrested him, and he saw her all huddled up at the head of the sofa, with hidden face and heaving shoulders.
He laid his egg on the table and went and pulled at her arm.