"We are far from criticizing any changes your dear mother may have been induced to make," she said; "but as your Aunt Isabella has frequently observed to me, what can a Londoner know of landscape gardening?"
"A Londoner?" said Peter.
"Your guardian, my boy," said the canon, nervously. "He has slightly opened out the views; that is all your good aunt is intending to say."
Peter's good aunt opened her mouth to contradict this assertion indignantly, but Lady Mary broke in with some impatience.
"I do not mean the trees. Of course the house was shut in far too closely by the trees at the back and sides. We wanted more air, more light, more freedom." She drew a long breath and flung out her hands in unconscious illustration. "But there are many very necessary changes that—that Peter will like to see," said Lady Mary, glancing almost defiantly at the pursed-up mouths and lowered eyelids of the sisters.
Peter walked suddenly into the middle of the banqueting-hall and looked round him.
"Why, what's come to the old place? It's—it's changed somehow. What have you been doing to it?" he demanded.
"Don't you—don't you like it, Peter?" faltered Lady Mary. "The roof was not safe, you know, and had to be mended, and—and when it was all done up, the furniture and curtains looked so dirty and ugly and inappropriate. I sent them away and brought down some of the beautiful old things that belonged to your great-grandmother, and made the hall brighter and more livable."
Peter examined the new aspect of his domain with lowering brow.
"I don't like it at all," he announced, finally. "I hate changes."