He returned to his darning.
“Her gesture, motion, and her smiles,
Her wit, her voice, my heart beguiles,
Beguiles my heart, I know not why,
And yet I love her till I die,”
he sang, sticking his needle carefully in and out of the heel of the sock.
“And the green of the wool doesn’t match the green of the sock one little bit!” he said ruefully. “But, after all, no one looks at me; and I certainly can’t look at my own heels—at least, not without a certain amount of effort, so n’importe, as they say in France.”
“Cupid is wingèd and doth range
Her country, so my love doth change;
But change she earth, or change she sky,
Yet will I love her till I die.”
Peter cut the wool with his pocket-knife, and [Pg 173]contemplated the sock with his head on one side. Then he threw it on to the table. There was a little laugh in his eyes, not caused by the contemplation of the sock.
“I believe,” he said whimsically, “that that fellow—what was his name?—Neil Macdonald, was right after all, and that Chaucer is—well, an old fraud. Yet,” and a wistful look crept into his blue eyes, “I might have done much better if I’d gone on believing in him. Yet, I don’t know. After all, Peter, my son, isn’t the joy worth a bit of heartache!”
He got up from his chair and went towards the door. He could look over the hedge and up and down the lane from his position. A couple of big drops, large as half-crowns, had just fallen on his spotlessly white doorstep—Peter was proud of his doorstep. They were followed by another and another. There was a flash, a terrific peal, and then with a sudden hiss came the deluge. Straight down it fell, as if poured from buckets, and the lightning played across the sky and the thunder pealed.
“Ouf!” said Peter, drawing in a huge breath as the refreshing scent of the grateful earth came [Pg 174]to his nostrils. “That’s really quite the very best smell there is, and worth all your eau-de-colognes, and your phulnanas, and—and your whatever you call ’em put together. It really is—” And then he broke off, for down the lane came running a woman, her head bent, the rain beating, drenching down upon her. Peter was at the gate in a moment.
“Come in here!” he called.