"I am sure I scarcely refer to my weak health in my letters," said Mrs. Hewel, plaintively, "and it is natural I should like my only daughter to be with me now and then. Aunt Elizabeth has never had a child herself, and cannot understand the feelings of a mother."
Sarah and Peter exchanged a fleeting glance. She shrugged her shoulders slightly, and Peter looked at his boots. They understood each other perfectly.
Freshly to the recollection of both rose the lamentations of a little red-haired girl, banished from the Eden of her beloved home, and condemned to a cheap German school. Mrs. Hewel, in her palmiest days, had never found it necessary to race up and down the stable-yard to amuse Sarah; and when her only daughter developed scarlatina, she had removed herself and her spaniels from home for months to escape infection.
"Here is papa," said Sarah, breaking the silence. "He was so vexed to be out when you arrived yesterday. He heard nothing of it till he came back."
Colonel Hewel walked in through the open window, with his dog at his heels. He was delighted to welcome his young neighbour home. A short, sturdy man, with red whiskers, plentiful stiff hair, and bright, dark blue eyes. From her father Sarah had inherited her colouring, her short nose, and her unfailing good spirits.
"I would have come over to welcome you," he said, shaking Peter's hand cordially, "only when I came home there was all the upset of Lady Tintern's arrival, and half a hundred things to be done to make her sufficiently comfortable. And then I would have come to fetch Sarah after dinner, only I couldn't be sure she mightn't have started; and if I'd gone down by the road, ten to one she'd have come up by the path through the woods. So I just sat down and smoked my pipe, and waited for her to come back. You'll stay to lunch, eh, Peter?"
"I must get back to my mother, sir," said Peter. His respect for Sarah's father, who had once commanded a cavalry regiment, had increased a thousand-fold since he last saw Colonel Hewel. "But won't you—I mean she'd be very glad—I wish you'd come over and dine to-night, all of you—as you could not come yesterday evening?"
Thus Peter delivered his first invitation, blushing with eagerness.
"I'm afraid we couldn't leave Lady Tintern—or persuade her to come with us," said the colonel, shaking his head. Then he brightened up. "But as soon as she and Sally have toddled back to town I see no reason why we shouldn't come, eh, Emily?" he said, turning to his wife.
Peter looked rather blank, and a laugh trembled on Sarah's pretty lips.