As it was, the incessant chill and dampness of the weather had done his health no good. His blood was thin from long years of Indian sun, and he found it a constant effort to resist. The gloom seemed even worse than the cold, and, although he had thought that he should never wish for sun again, after India, he did wish for it now, wished for it until it became a sheer physical need. For the first time in his life he began to feel that he was getting old. Or was it, he asked himself, only that he had time now to think of such things? Bessie Lonsdale saw it, for her eyes were quick and keen, and she had long been in the habit of mothering. "It's this beastly London," she said. "I know!" And it was she who made him promise to go away for a week in the country, where he might have a glimpse at least of the sun. He remembered an inn at Homebury St. Mary, where he had spent a summer as a child, and it was there, for no reason except the memory of so much sun, that he planned to go, "by the middle of next week," he said, "when Peggy will be coming home." They had been talking of her return, and he had confessed to the notion that he would feel himself superfluous, out of place, somehow, when Peggy came home. His confession had pleased her, she hardly knew why. As for herself, she had had something of the same thought that when Peggy came there would be--well, a different atmosphere. She was looking forward daily now to a letter saying by what train Peggy would return. On Thursday there arrived, instead, a letter from Lady McCrae, begging that they be allowed "to keep our dear Peggy for another ten days." The heavy weather had kept the young people indoors, and a great many excursions which they had planned had had to be put off on account of it. She said, in her dignified way, many things vastly pleasing to a mother's heart, and Mrs. Lonsdale could do nothing but write, giving her consent. When she had written the letter and sent it off she began to be curiously depressed, and she wandered through the flat, conscious at last of just how much she had really missed Peggy's laughter, her gaiety, and her swift young step. The week before her loomed longer than all the time she had been away. That afternoon she told Ayling her news, but it was not until she had finished telling him that she remembered that he, too, would be going away. She hadn't known until then how much his being there had meant. "I don't know," she said, "how I shall put in the week! After all, I've been missing her more than I knew." It occurred to Ayling that, standing there before him with Lady McCrae's letter, which she had been showing him, in her hand, she was exactly like a little girl who was going to be left all alone. The idea came to him suddenly. "Look here, Bessie; come down to Homebury St. Mary with me! It would do you no end of good."