Prue, too! On the blue of his heaven, Prue forms another little cloud. Prue makes no pretence of pleasure in the prospect of his brotherhood; and to Prue he is sacrificed oftener than he thinks just. It is, thanks to Prue, that he has so often been sent back prematurely to his pot-house; that he has had prematurely to break off his trance of wonder at the eyes, the only blackness under which springs from some slight and fugitive fatigue; at the cheek, which his doubting finger may rub as hard as it chooses without any other result than that of intensifying its damask; at the hair, from which he has been allowed once to withdraw the pins in order to convince himself by ocular demonstration that though it may come down, it can never come off.
'I think you had better go now. She has been alone all day,' is a formula whose recurrence he has now learnt to dread.
He shrugs his shoulders.
'I have been alone for thirty-two years.'
'I think if you would not mind going now——'
'I should mind extremely.'
She laughs softly, the happy low laugh of the consciously well-beloved, rich in the prospect of a whole lifetime of love ahead.
'Whether you mind it or not, I am afraid you must go. She had been crying this morning.'
'More shame for her. What has she to cry about? Now if I were to cry—Peggy, you like her much better than you do me' (taking her half angrily in his arms). 'Pah!' with a change of tone, perceiving, for the first time, a gardenia pinned upon the breast of her gown; 'why do you wear that horrid thing?'
'Franky gave it me. He begged it from the gardener at the Manor for me.'