"I'm sorry, Peggy." Peter sighed a little. "I'm nursing Thomas, you see."
Peggy at that was on her knees on the floor, taking both of them into her large embrace.
"Oh, you two poor little darling boys, what's to become of you both? That child has a heart of stone, to leave you to yourselves the way she's done. Don't defend her, Peter; I won't hear a word said for her again as long as I live; she deserves Guy Vyvian, and I couldn't say a worse word for her than that. You poor little Tommy; come to me then, babykins. You must come back to us now, Peter, and I'll look after you both."
She cuddled Thomas to her breast with one arm, and put the other round Peter's shoulders as he sat huddled up, his chin resting on his knees. At the moment it was difficult to say which of the two looked the most forsaken, the most left to himself. Only Thomas hadn't yet learnt to laugh, and Peter had. He laughed now, softly and not happily.
"It has been rather a ghastly fiasco, hasn't it," he said. "Absurd, you know, too, in a way. I thought it was all working out so nicely, Thomas coming and everything. But no. It wasn't working out nicely at all. Things don't as a rule, do they?"
There was a new note of dreariness in his voice; a note that had perhaps been kept out of it of set purpose for a long time. Now there seemed at the moment no particular reason to keep it out any more, though fresh reasons would arrive, no doubt, very soon; and Thomas when waking was a reason in himself. But in this dim hour between two roads, this hour of relaxation of tension in the shadowy firelight, when Thomas slept and only Peggy listened, Peter, having fallen crashing through floor after floor of his pleasant house of life, till he was nearly at the bottom, looked up at all the broken floors and sighed.
Peggy's arm was comfortingly about him. To her he was always a little, brittle, unlucky boy, as she had first seen him long ago.
"Never you mind, Peterkin. There's a good time coming, I do believe. She'll come back, perhaps; who knows? Vyvian wouldn't do for long, not even for Rhoda. Besides, you may be sure he'll throw her off soon, and then she'll want to come back to you and Tommy. I wouldn't say that to any other man, because, of course, no other man would have her back; but I do believe, Peterkin, that you would, wouldn't you now? I expect you'd smile and say, 'Oh, come in, you're just in time for tea and to see me bath Thomas,' and not another word about it."
"Probably," said Peter. "There wouldn't be much to say, would there? But she won't come back; I know that. Even if she leaves him she won't. Rhoda's horribly proud really, you know. She'd sooner sweep a crossing, or trim hats or something, than come near us again. I don't know what to hope about it. I suppose one must hope they'll go on together, as Rhoda seems to like him as he is; but it's an awful thought.... She's right that we never understood each other. I couldn't, you know, bear to think of spending even one day alone with Vyvian. I should be sick, like Thomas. The mere sight of his hair is enough, and his hand with that awful ring on it. I—I simply draw the line at him. Why does Rhoda care for him? How can she?" Peter frowned over it in bewilderment.
Peggy said, "Girls are silly things. And I suppose the way one's been brought up counts, and what one's inherited, and all that."