ent out of the house. And she wondered where. Hours of
stupefying depression were followed by fits of irritability that
frightened her. And then she wished that he would not go to the Hannays,
and eat things that disagreed with him.

Little Peggy helped to make his misery more unendurable. She was always
running to and fro between her father and her mother, with questions
concerning kisses and other endearments, till he, too, wondered what she
would make of it when she began to see. Everything conspired against him.
Peggy's formidable innocence was re-enforced by the still more formidable
innocence of her mother. Anne positively flaunted before him the
spectacle of her maternal passion. She showered her tendernesses on the
child, without measuring their effect on him, for whom she had none. She
did not allow herself to wonder how he felt, when he sat there hungry,
looking on, while the little creature, greedy for caresses, was given her
fill of love.

And when he was tortured by headache, she brought him an effervescing
drink, and considered that she had done her duty.

A worse headache than usual had smitten him one late Sunday afternoon in
August. A Sunday afternoon that made (but for Majendie and his headache)
a little sacred idyl, so golden was it, so holy and so happy, with Peggy
trotting between her father's and mother's knees, and the prodigal,
burning with penitence, upstairs in Edie's room, singing _Lead, Kindly
Light_, in a heavenly tenor.

Peggy tugged at Majendie's coat.

"Sing, daddy, sing! Mummy, make daddy sing."

"I can't make him sing, darling," said Anne, who was making soft eyes at
Peggy, and curling her mouth into the shape it took when it sent kisses
to her across the room.

Instead of singing, Majendie, with his eyes on Anne, flung his arms round
Peggy and lifted her up and covered her little face with kisses. The
child lay across his knees with her head thrown back and her legs
struggling, and laughed for terror and delight.

Anne spoke with some austerity. "Put her down, Walter; I don't care for
all this hugging and kissing. It excites the child."

Peggy was put down. But when bed-time came she achieved an inimitable
revenge. Anne had to pick her up from the floor to carry her to bed. At
first Peggy refused to be carried; then she surrendered on conditions
that brought the blood to her mother's face.

From her mother's arms Peggy's head hung down as she struggled to say
good-night a s