Peter closed the door and went back to his room. Then he took a fifth sheet of paper, and wrote:
“WATTS: A day’s thought has brought a change of feeling on my part. Neither can be the better for alienation or unkind thoughts. I regret already my attitude of yesterday. Let us cancel all that has happened since our college days, and put aside as if it had never occurred.
“PETER”
Just as he had finished this, his door opened softly. ‘Peter did not hear it, but took the letter up and read it slowly.
“Boo!”
Peter did not jump at the Boo. He looked up very calmly, but the moment he looked up, jump he did. He jumped so that he was shaking hands before the impetus was lost.
“This is the nicest kind of a surprise,” he said.
“Bother you, you phlegmatic old cow,” cried a merry voice. “Here we have spent ten minutes palavering your boy, in order to make him let us surprise you, and then when we spring it on you, you don’t budge. Wasn’t it shabby treatment, Dot?”
“You’ve disappointed us awfully, Mr. Stirling.”
Peter was shaking hands more deliberately with Leonore than he had with Watts. He had been rather clever in shaking hands with him first, so that he need not hurry himself over the second. So he had a very nice moment—all too short—while Leonore’s hand lay in his. He said, in order to prolong the moment, without making it too marked, “It will take something more frightful than you, Miss D’Alloi, to make me jump.” Then Peter was sorry he had said it, for Leonore dropped her eyes.