The next evening, however, we had to go, when Peggy herself came around and asked us. Of course Mr. Goward was with Peggy most of the time. They certainly looked charming together, but rather conscious and stiff. Every member of the family was watching his every motion. Oh, I've been there! I know what it is!
Some of the neighbors were there, too. Peter hardly ever plays on the big, old-fashioned grand-piano, but that night he was so bored he had to. The family always THINK they're very musical—you can know the style when I tell you that after Peter has been rambling through bits from Schumann and Richard Strauss they always ask him if he won't “play something.” Well, after Peggy had gone into the other room with her mother to do the polite to Mrs. Temple, Mr. Goward gravitated over to where I sat in the big bay-window behind the piano; he had that “be-good-to-me,-won't-you?” air that I know so well! Then we got to talking and listening in between whiles—he knows lots of girls in the Art League—till Peter began playing that heart-breaking “Im Herbst” from the Franz Songs, and then he said:
“You're going to be my sister, aren't you? Won't you let me hold your hand while your husband's playing that? It makes me feel so lonely!”
I answered, promptly, “Certainly; hold both hands if you like!”
And we laughed, and Peter turned around for a moment and smiled, too. Oh, it WAS nice to meet somebody of one's own kind! You get so sick of having everything taken seriously.
That night, after we'd left the house, Harry caught up with us at the corner on his way to the hotel, and went home with us, and we all talked until three o'clock in the morning. We simply ate all over the house—goodness! how hungry we were! At Peter's home it's an unheard-of thing to eat anything after half-past six—almost a crime, unless it's a wedding or state reception. We began now with coffee in the dining-room, and jam and cheese, and ended by gradual stages at hot lobster in the chafing-dish in the studio—the darky was out all night, as usual.
Then Harry and Peter concluded that it was too late to go to bed at all—it was really daylight—so they took bath-towels and went down to the river and had a swim, and Harry slipped back to the house at six o'clock. He said we'd repeat it all the next night, but of course we didn't. He's the kind that, as soon as he's promised to do a thing, feels at once that he doesn't really want to do it.
The next day Peter's Aunt Elizabeth came on the scene, and of course we stayed away as much as we could. She loves Peter—they all do—but she hasn't any use for me, and shows it. She thinks I'm perfectly dumb and stupid. I simply don't exist, and I've never tried to undeceive her—it's too much trouble. She always wants to tell people how to do their hair and put on their clothes.
Miss Elizabeth Talbert is a howling swell; she only just endures it here. I've heard lots of things about her from Bell Pickering, who knows the Munroes—Lily Talbert, they call her there. She thinks she's fond of Art, but she really doesn't know the first thing about it—she doesn't like anything that isn't expensive and elegant and a la mode.
The only time she ever came to see me she actually PICKED her way around the house when I was showing it to her—there's no other word to use—just because there was a glass of jelly on the sofa, and the painting things were all over the studio with Peter's clothes. I perfectly hated her that day, yet I do love to look at her, and I can see how she might be terribly nice if you were any one she thought worth caring for. There have been times when I've seen a look on her face, like the clear ethereal light beyond the sunset, that just PULLED at me. She is very fond of Peggy; I know she would never do anything to injure Peggy.