"Yes," said Peter, sitting up and facing her, "I dare."
"I'm glad of that," said Sarah. Her deep voice softened. "I should have thought less of you if you hadn't dared."
Suddenly she rose from her mossy throne, shook the crumbs off her skirt, and looked down upon Peter with blue eyes sparkling beneath her long lashes, and the fresh red colour deepening and spreading in her cheeks, until even the tips of her delicate ears and her creamy throat turned pink.
"Well," said Sarah, "go and stop it. Make your mother sorry and ashamed. It would be very easy. Tell her she's too old to be happy. But say good-bye to me first."
"Sarah!"
"Why is it to be all sunshine for you, and all shade for her?" said
Sarah. "Hasn't she wept enough to please you? Mayn't she have her St.
Martin's summer? God gives it to her. Will you take it away?"
"Sarah!"
He looked up at her crimsoned tearful face in dismay. Was this Sarah the infantile—the pink-and-white—the seductive, laughing, impudent Sarah? And yet how passionately Peter admired her in this mood of virago, which he had never seen since the days of her childish rages of long ago.
"Why do you suppose," said Sarah, disdainfully, "that I've been letting you follow me about all this summer, and desert her; except to show her how little you are to be depended upon? To bring home to her how foolish she'd be to fling away her happiness for your sake. You, who at one word from me, were willing to turn her out of her own home, to live in a wretched little villa at your very door. Don't interrupt me," said Sarah, stamping, "and say you weren't willing. You told her so. I meant you to tell her, and yet—I could have killed you, Peter, when I heard her sweet voice faltering out to me, that she would be ready and glad to give up her place to her boy's wife, whenever the time should come."
"She told you?" cried Peter.