Peter was obviously eager to be in the next room, and that, he explained, would have been the dining room, only he had taken it for his own, and they ate in the kitchen. I think that I had never heard him mention his father at all, and this "we" of his now was a lonelier thing than any lonely "I."
"This is my room," he said as we entered it. "It's where I live when I'm not at the works. Come and let me show you."
So Peter showed Miggy his room, and he showed it to me, too, though I do not think that he was conscious of that. It was a big room, bare of floor and, save for the inescapable flowery calendar, bare of walls. There was a shelf of books—not many, but according to Peter's nature sufficiently well-selected to plead for him: "Look at us. Who could love us and not be worth while?"—bad enough logic, in all conscience, to please any lover. Miggy hardly looked at the books. She so exasperatingly took it for granted that a man must be everything in general that it left hardly anything for him to be in particular. But Peter made her look, and he let me look too, and I supplied the comments and Miggy occasionally did her three little nods. The writing table Peter had made from a box, and by this Miggy was equally untouched. All men, it appeared, should be able to make writing tables from boxes. With the linen table cover it was a little different—this Peter's mother had once worked in cross-stitch for his room, and Miggy lifted an end and looked at it.
"She took all those stitches for you!" she said. "There's one broken," she showed him.
"I can mend that," Peter said proudly, "I'll show you my needle kit."
At this she laughed out suddenly with, "Needle kit! What a real regular old bachelor you are, aren't you?"
"I can't help that," said Peter, with "and the same cannot be said for you" sticking from the sentence.
On the table lay the cannery account books, and one was open at a full page of weary little figures.
"Is this where you sit nights and do your work and read?" Miggy demanded.