Faith looked up quickly. It had never occurred to her to wonder where Forrester spent his time when he was not at home.
"Well, I suppose he likes it," she said defensively.
"Likes it!" There was a world of scorn in Peg's voice. She turned again to her moody contemplation of the garden.
"Do you know what I'd do if I was his wife?" she asked. "Well, I'd make it so jolly nice for him here at home that he'd never want to go out to his other friends and their wives. I'd let him see that I could entertain every bit as properly as they can. I'd...."
"You've changed, haven't you?" Faith said bitterly. "It's only two months ago that you were calling him every name you could think of, and telling me that I was a fool to have married him."
"I know I was," Peg admitted calmly, though she flushed. "And I think p'raps I was the fool, after all."
She turned again suddenly.
"Faith, why do you call him the 'Beggar Man'? You've done it once or twice lately."
"Have I?" Faith did not raise her eyes. "Well, he really gave himself the name," she explained reluctantly. "It was—was the first time I met him—he asked if I'd got any people, and I said yes—I told him about—about mother and the twins...." She caught her breath with a long sigh. What years and years ago now it all seemed! "And he said that—that I was richer than he, because I'd got people to love me, and that he'd got only money. He said that I was Queen ... Queen somebody or other, and he was the Beggar Man. It was a fairy story or something, I think—he said he'd tell me about it some day ... but he hasn't."
She looked past Peg to the silent garden. It hurt somehow to speak of that day so long ago now, and remember how different Forrester had seemed then to what he did now. Did she seem different to him, too? she wondered.