r had
passed him in the doorway at Astleys, that it had taken his breath away.

CHAPTER XVII

QUARRELS IN THE RAIN

In Brook Street the rain fell. It fell straight and disconsolate,
unutterably wet, splashing drearily on the paved street between the rows
of wet houses. It fell all day, from the dim dawn, through the murky
noon, to the dark evening, desolately weeping over a tired city.

Inside number fifty-one, Peggy mended clothes and sang a little song,
with Thomas in her lap, and Peter, sitting in the window-seat, knitted
Thomas a sweater of Cambridge blue. Peter was getting rather good at
knitting. Hilary was there too, but not mending, or knitting, or singing;
he was coughing, and complaining of the climate.

"I fancy it is going to be influenza," he observed at intervals,
shivering. "I feel extraordinarily weak, and ache all up my back. I fancy
I have a high temperature, only Peter has broken the thermometer. You
were a hundred and four, I think, Peter, the day you went to bed. I
rather expect I am a hundred and five. But I suppose I shall never know,
as it is impossible to afford another thermometer. I feel certain it is
influenza; and in that case I must give up all hope of getting that job
from Pickering, as I cannot possibly go and see him to-morrow. Not but
that it would be a detestable job, anyhow; but anything to keep our heads
above water.... My headache is now like a hot metal band all round my
head, Peggy."

"Poor old boy," said Peggy. "Take some more phenacetine. And do go to
bed, Hilary. If you _have_ got flu, you'll only make yourself as bad as
Peter did by staying up too long. You've neither of you any more sense
than Tommy here, nor so much, by a long way, have they, little man? No,
Kitty, let him be; you'd only drop him on the floor if I let you, and
then he'd break, you know."

Silvio was kneeling up on the window-seat by Peter's side, taking an
interest in the doings of the street.

Peggy said, "Well, Larry, what's the news of the great world?"

"It's raining," said Silvio, who had something of the mournful timbre of
Hilary's voice in his.

Peggy said, "Oh, darling, be more interesting! I'm horribly afraid you're
going to grow up obvious, Larry, and that will never do. What else is it
doing?"

"There's a cat in the rain," said Silvio, flattening his nose against the
blurred glass, and manifestly inclined to select the sadder aspects of
the world's news for retail. That tende