It is true that for the remainder of their holiday, during which, with
her husband, Graham, Belle, and Betty, Mrs. Guthrie went from one
charming place to another, seeing shrines and looking down from famous
heights on garden-like valleys of English country, Peter's letters came
as regularly as usual. They were no shorter and no less intimate; and in
the first one that she received, the day after leaving Oxford, he told
her his great news,--but he hadn't spoken of it--he hadn't come to her
at once, and she felt with a great shock of pain that she was deposed.
Also she was well aware of the fact that the same posts which brought
her letters brought letters to Betty--and she was jealous.
Uttering no word of complaint, even to the Doctor, little Mrs. Guthrie
nursed her sorrow and went out of her way to be very nice to Betty. Her
mother-instinct told her that she must win this girl; otherwise there
was a chance that she might in the future see very little of Peter. In
all this she had one small triumph, of which she made the most. Her
letters from Peter contained more news than those written to Betty, and
thus she was able to score a little over the girl. With an air of great
superiority, very natural under the circumstances, she told Betty and
the others the manner in which Peter had gone down from Oxford; of the
dinner that was given to him by the American Club,--a great evening,
during which he was presented with a silver cigarette box covered with
signatures,--of the farewell luncheon with his professors and the
delightful things that they said to him there; of his strenuous doings
at Henley, the stern training, the race itself in which his boat was
beaten; of the wild night on the Vanderbilt barge; of the few cheery
days spent in London with a bunch of the Rhodesmen; and finally his
preparations for his visit to Thrapstone-Wynyates, in Shropshire, the
famous old Tudor House of Kenyon's father.
Three times during these pleasant weeks Peter ran down to see,--not her,
but Betty, and went out with her with his face alight and then hurried
back to his engagements, having given her, his mother, who loved him so,
several hugs and a few incoherent words. It was the way of life, youth
to youth, but it was very hard.
On the afternoon of the fifth of August, when the party crossed the
gangplank at Southampton to go aboard the _Olympic_, little Mrs. Guthrie
told herself that in a few minutes she would see Peter's great form
elbowing through the crowd, although he had not said that he would be
there to say good-bye. She almost hoped that something might prevent him
from being in time, because she knew that he would not come solely to
hold her in his arms, but for another reason. Nothing, however, did
prevent him. He followed them almost instantly on board; and although he
never left her side, he surreptitiously held Betty's hand all the time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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