"Aunt Isabella has never changed hers, has she?" said Peter.
"Aunt Isabella is a good deal more conventional than I am; and a great many years older," said Lady Mary, tremulously.
"I don't see what that has to do with it," said Peter.
She turned away, and began to gather up her scattered roses. A few moments since the roses had been less than nothing to her. What were roses, what was anything, compared to Peter? Now they crept back into their own little place in creation; their beauty and fragrance dumbly conveyed a subtle comfort to her soul, as she lovingly laid one against another, until a glowing bouquet of coppery golden hue was formed. She lifted an ewer from the old dresser, and poured water into a great silver goblet, wherein she plunged the stalks of her roses. Why should they be left to fade because Peter had come home?
"You remember these?" she said, "from the great climber round my bedroom window? I leant out and cut them—little thinking—"
Peter signified a gloomy assent. He stood before the chimneypiece watching his mother, but not offering to help her; rather as though undecided as to what his next words ought to be.
"Peter, darling, it's so funny to see you standing there, so tall, and so changed—" But though it was so funny the tears were dropping from her blue eyes, which filled and overflowed like a child's, without painful effort or grimaces. "You—you remind me so of your father," she said, almost involuntarily.
"I'm glad I'm like him," said Peter.
She sighed. "How I used to wish you were a little tiny bit like me too!"
"But I'm not, am I?"