"
Peter reflected for a moment. It was all he could do to hide his
delight.
"And what do your people say?"
"My aunt says I am an idiot, and Corinne won't speak to me."
"And your uncle?"
"Nothing, to me. He told Garry that if I didn't come back in three
days I should never enter his house or his office again."
"But you are going back? Are you not?"
"No,--never. Not if I starve!"
Peter's eyes were twinkling when he related the conversation to me
the next day.
"I could have hugged him, Major," he said, when he finished, "and
I would if we had not been at the club."
CHAPTER XIII
The Scribe is quite positive that had you only heard about it as
he had, even with the details elaborated, not only by Peter, who
was conservatism itself in his every statement, but by Miss
Felicia as well--who certainly ought to have known--you would not
have believed it possible until you had seen it. Even then you
would have had to drop into one of Miss Felicia's cretonne-
upholstered chairs--big easy-chairs that fitted into every hollow
and bone in your back--looked the length of the uneven porch, run
your astonished eye down the damp, water-soaked wooden steps to
the moist brick pavement below, and so on to the beds of crocuses
blooming beneath the clustering palms and orange trees, before you
could realize (in spite of the drifting snow heaped up on the
door-steps of her house outside--some of it still on your shoes)
that you were in Miss Felicia's tropical garden, attached to Miss
Felicia's Geneseo house, and not in the back yard of some old home
in the far-off sunny South.
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