Mrs. Caldwell leaned forward and touched his shoulder. "I'm very serious," she said. "Here's my little orphaned Sheila—my dead boy's child—with no near kin in the world but me. And I'm not fit for the task of helping her to grow up. Oh, Peter, will you help?"
"You know I will! At least, I'll try."
She smiled at him through her earnestness. "Your rhetoric isn't enough," she warned him. "All you know isn't enough. You'll have to keep on learning too, Peter, if you're really going to help her."
"I will," he promised again. "I'm twenty-eight, and a lazy beggar—but I can still learn."
Mrs. Caldwell drew a quick breath of relief: "Thank you, Peter. To tell you the truth, I've been really a little frightened lately."
"About Sheila? But she's so sweet!"
"And so strange! She isn't like a child. And it's not because she's outgrowing her childhood, for she's not like a young girl either. Peter"—and Mrs. Caldwell's voice sank to a whisper now, as if she communicated a dangerous thing—"Peter, she's like—a poet!"
Peter laughed outright at her timid pronouncement of the word. "But is that so terrible?" he teased. "All poets are not mad, after all."
"Oh, you may laugh. I dare say my terror of a thing like genius is funny. But it's genuine terror, Peter. What should I do with a poet on my hands? I tell you, I'm not wise enough to—to trim the wick of a star!"
"Well," he suggested comfortably, "she may not be a poet. What makes you think she's likely to be?"