On the other hand I did not like Abby's calling Mr. Pegg by his intimate name of Pinto, which she did once or twice during the remainder of our talk. Because I could not bring myself to the belief that Abby would be the proper stepmother for Peaches. Their tastes were too much alike. And though I had very little against Abby except her clothes, I was as yet unconvinced that clothes would make a man happy. And while I worked on the socks I was making for Mr. Pegg as I sat up late that night waiting for Peaches to return from a moonlit walk with the duke, I wondered again and again how a woman of Abby's age could think so much of such things. When Peaches came in at last and I had helped her out of the dress of light gray satin which she had worn, I could not but think that the girl was daily giving greater justification to her pet name. Her skin was as smooth and soft as the satin from which it emerged, and as gleaming. The garment itself was like a piece of the silver night outside, and her eyes were deep soft pools, her head like a golden star. It hardly seemed right that any woman should be so beautiful. She had taken some softening quality from the Italian skies as if this corner of the globe which was so like and yet so unlike her native heath had rubbed off the crudities left by the sharper climate, and done so the more readily because the country was all so familiar to her--far more so than to Boston-bred me--and she was ripe for impressions, whereas I was merely ready for comparisons. She was unusually silent, though her glowing face was as easily read as a printed page. I helped her into a soft white negligee. "Sandy!" she said, going to the window and looking down at the dimly twinkling town and the black, moon-cut shape of the sweeping coast line. "I am going to call him Sandy! I can put my head on his shoulder without leaning down, Free!" "Eh?" I said sharply. But the wretched child wouldn't tell me another thing. Not that it needed much telling. When they were together, which was practically all the time, one could have cut the atmosphere with a piece of wedding silver it was so thick and soft. When their eyes met suddenly it made my heart jump and I wanted to cry. It was lovely, lovely! And she said so little about it that I knew it must be serious. One day in the garden at San Remo, where we now spent much of our time, she asked him to pick her a rose which was growing just out of her reach, but not out of his. It delighted her to confirm his superior height, and she did it at every conceivable opportunity. He reached the rose easily and she gave him her little gold penknife, which she had been using to gather a bouquet, to cut the stem with. It was a beautiful knife, with her name on it in diamonds, a most characteristic gift from her father. "By jove, what a jolly one!" said the duke. "Keep it, Sandy," said Peaches. And while he smiled his protest she fastened it to his watch chain by the little ring through the end.