"Rhoder likes you," said Mrs. Johnson, a smile of relief overspreading her jolly face. "She was sayin' so only the other day. She has a great respect for your knowledge of art, too. 'You wouldn't think it just to talk with him,' she said, 'but he knows the most surprisin' things. Knows them for himself'—that was how she put it—'without needin' to depend on any books, or what anyone else says. I wish I was like that, mother,' she says, and sighs. And of course, I knew why she wished that, and I said to her, 'Rhoder, my dear, never you mind about knowin' things; gals don't need to bother their heads about that. You look after the outside of your head,' I said, chaffing her about her hair, you know, 'and leave the inside to look after itself.' I made her cross, of course; I'm for ever makin' Rhoder cross without meanin' it. But that just shows what she feels towards you, you see. And you'd talk healthy-like to her, which is more than some does, if I know anythin'. One feels that of you, Mr. Peter, if you'll excuse my sayin' it, that your talk is as innocent as a baby's prattle, though it mayn't always mean much."
"Thank you very much," said Peter. "I will certainly prattle to Miss Rhoda whenever she will let me. I should enjoy it, of course."
"Then that's settled." Mrs. Johnson rose, and shook out her skirts with relief. "And a weight off my mind it will be.... You could make a third with Rhoder and that Vyvian to-morrow afternoon, if you were so good and not otherwise employed. They're off together somewhere, I know."
"Making a third" was a little beyond even Peter's readiness to be helpful, and he looked dubious.
"I wonder if Mr. Vyvian would let me do that. You see, he doesn't much like me. I expect I give him the creeps, like a toad...." Then, seeing Mrs. Johnson's relieved face cloud, he added, "Oh, well, I'll ask them to take me," and she smiled at him as at a good child. "I knew you would!"
Hilary didn't come in to dinner. That was as well; it gave Peter more time. Perhaps it would be easier late at night to speak of the hopeless, weary, impossible things that had suddenly risen in the way; easier to think of things to say about them that wouldn't too much hurt Hilary or himself.
At dinner Peter was very quiet and polite to everyone. Vyvian's demeanour towards him was touched with irony; his smile was a continual reference to the fellowship of secrecy that bound them. Rhoda was very silent; Peter supposed that Vyvian had been snubbing her.
Hilary came home late. Peter and Peggy and Vyvian were sitting in the dimly-lighted saloon, and the ubiquitous Illuminato was curled up, a sleepy ball, on the marble top of a book-case. Peggy had a habit of leaving him lying about in convenient corners, as a little girl her doll.
"You look tired to death, my dear," she commented, as Hilary came in. Her kindly grey eyes turned from him to Peter, who had looked up from the book he was reading with a nervous movement. Peter's sweet-tempered companionableness had been oddly obscured this evening. Perhaps he too was tired to death. And poor little Rhoda had been so unmercifully snubbed all the evening that at last she had crept up to bed all but in tears. Peggy felt very sorry for everyone to-night; they all seemed to need it so much.
Vyvian, as usual, had a headache. When Hilary came in, he rose and said he was going upstairs to try and get some sleep—an endeavour seldom successful in this noisy and jarring world, one gathered. Before he embarked on it he said to Peter, squirting soda into a large tumbler of whisky, "Stefani want anything particular to-day?"