He put the letter into his pocket, but kept the parcel in his hand. He came out of the post-office and turned up the hill, walking rather quickly. He passed shops and some old-fashioned houses in a row. At the top of the street was a big house wall-enclosed. He left it on his right, and passed more houses of the villa order, evidently recently built. Presently they gave place to cottages. Peter quickened his pace, and all the time he was fingering that brown-paper parcel. At last the cottages, too, were left behind, and there was nothing but hedges and fields before him.
Peter turned into one of the fields and sat down on the grass. He took out his clasp-knife and cut the string that held the parcel, pulling forth [Pg 24]the contents. A book, green-covered, with the title in gold lettering, was in his hand.
“Under the Span of the Rainbow, by Robin Adair,” so the lettering ran. The last was, of course, a pseudonym.
Peter looked at it; then slowly, shyly, he opened the cover.
With almost just such reverence might a mother look on her new-born babe, marvelling at her own creation, and quite regardless of the fact that the same great miracle has been performed times out of number in the world, and will be performed again as frequently.
This was Peter’s child, his first-born. Through months of slow travail it had been created and brought forth. Under hedges in the open air, in barns by the light of a single candle, he had worked while dumb beasts had looked at him with mild, wondering eyes. In sunshine and in cloud it had been with him; soft winds had rustled its pages, cold blasts had crept under doors and chilled his fingers while he wrote. And now at last, fair and in dainty garb, it came forth to the world, breathing the clean freshness of open spaces, of sun and wind and rain; tender with the magic of nights, [Pg 25]buoyant with the vitality of sunrise. And yet through it all, as through his piping, lay the strange minor note, the underhint of longing.
Peter looked up. His blue eyes were dancing with happiness.
“Ouf!” he said with a sigh of supreme content, stretching his long lean limbs; “it’s good to have done it.”
Then he opened the letter. It was merely a typewritten communication from the publishers, informing him that they were sending him one copy only of his book, according to his wish, and were addressing both it and the letter to the post-office he had mentioned. It ended by hoping that the book would be successful, to their mutual advantage.
The businesslike tone of the letter brought Peter down to earth again. He had been temporarily in heaven. The descent, however, was not a jarring one.