She went to the side of the stream and knelt down. Her plump white hands dexterously twisted and secured the long burnished coil. Then she glanced slyly round at Peter.
He lay face downwards on the grass. His shoulders heaved. The pretty picture Miss Sarah's coquetry presented had been lost upon the foolish youth.
She returned in a leisurely manner to her place, and leaning her chin on her hand, and her elbow on her knee, regarded him thoughtfully.
"Where was I? Yes, I remember. It is a lesson for a girl, Peter, never to marry a boy or a savage."
"Sarah!" said Peter. He raised his face and looked at her. His eyes were red, but he was too miserable to care; he was, as she had said, only a boy. "Sarah, you're not in earnest! You can't be! I—I know I ought to be angry." Miss Sarah laughed derisively. "Yes, you laugh, for you know too well I can't be angry with you. I love you!" said Peter, passionately, "though you are—as cruel as though I've not had pretty well as much to bear to-day, as I know how to stand. First, John Crewys, and now you—saying—"
"Just the truth," said Sarah, calmly.
"I don't deny," said Peter, in a quivering voice, "that—that some of the beastly things he said came—came home to me. I've been a selfish brute to her, I always have been. You've said so pretty plainly, and I—I dare say it's true. I think it's true. But to you—and I was so happy." He hid his face in his hand.
"I'm glad you have the grace to see the error of your ways at last," said Sarah, encouragingly. "It makes me quite hopeful about you. But I'm sorry to see you're still only thinking of our happiness—I mean yours," she corrected herself in haste, for a sudden eager hope flashed across Peter's miserable young face. "Yours, yours, yours. It's your happiness and not hers you think of still, though you've all your life before you, and she has only half hers. But no one has ever thought of her—except me, and one other."
"John Crewys?" said Peter, angrily.
"Not John Crewys at all," snapped Sarah. "He is just thinking of his own happiness like you are. All men are alike, except the one I'm thinking of. But though I make no doubt that John Crewys is just as selfish as you are, which is saying a good deal, yet, as it happens, John Crewys is the only man who could make her happy."