"You darling," said Peggy, beaming at him. "It'll give the house quite a
different feeling if you're in it. And how delighted the babies will be.
I believe we're going to have the fine time, after all, in spite of
this bothersome business. Hurrah for London and no mosquitoes! And we'll
be quite near a Catholic church, the way the children'll be able to run
in and out as they do here, and not pick up heathen customs. Why, Hilary,
I'm really pleased!"
Peggy was splendid. She was nearly always really pleased.
They started for England a week later. In the course of that week two
things happened. One was that Leslie gave Peter the Berovieri goblet for
his own.
"You've got to take it," he said. "If you don't, I shall give it back to
the prince. I've no right to it; I can't appreciate it properly. Since I
first saw you look at the thing I knew it was really yours. Take it and
keep it. You won't let me do anything else for you, but you shall let me
do that."
Peter looked at it with wistful love. His fingers lingered about its
exquisiteness.
"It will break," he said. "My things do break. Break and get lost, and go
with the dust. Or thieves will break in and steal it. I shan't be able to
keep it, I know; I'm such a bad hand at keeping things."
"Well, well, have a try," said Leslie. So Peter took it and was glad. It
was his one link with the world of exquisiteness and new-burnished joys
out of which he was being thrust; he would keep it if he could.
Leslie also said that he could get him a place in a business, if he
really wanted one.
"I shall be extremely little use," said Peter.
"Extremely little," Leslie agreed. "You'd much better not try. But if you
must you must."
"I'm afraid I must," said Peter.
So Leslie wrote letters about him, and secured him a humble post in a
warehouse. Leslie was not going to return to England at present. He was
going a tour round the world. Since Peter refused to accompany him, he
went alone.
"There's no one else I can fancy hanging round me day and night," he
said. "I wanted you, Margery"--the nickname fell from him with a clumsy
pathos--"but if you won't you won't. I shall acquire an abominable
collection of objects without you to guide me; but that can't be helped."
The other thing that happened was that Mrs. Johnson fell suddenly ill and
died. Before she died, she talked to Peter about Rhoda.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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