ncy too, perhaps, he inherited
from Hilary.

Presently he added, "There's a taxi coming up the street," and Peggy
placed Thomas on Peter's knees and came to the window to look. When she
had looked she said to Peter, "It must be nearly six o'clock" (the clock
gained seventeen minutes a day, so that the time was always a matter for
nicer calculation than Peggy could usually afford to give it); "and if
Hilary's got flu, I should think Tommy'd be best out of the room.... I
haven't easily the time to put him to bed this evening, really."

Peter accepted the suggestion and conveyed his son from the room. As he
did so, someone knocked at the front door, and Peggy ran downstairs to
open it.

She let in the unhappy noise of the rain and a tall, slim person in a fur
coat.

Peggy was surprised, and (most rarely) a little embarrassed. It wasn't
the person she had looked for. She even, in her unwonted confusion, let
the visitor speak first.

He said, "Is Mr. Peter Margerison in?" frostily, giving her no sign of
recognition.

"He is not, Lord Evelyn," said Peggy, hastily. "That is, he is busy with
the baby upstairs. Will I take him a message?"

"I shall be glad if you will tell him I have called to see him."

"I will, Lord Evelyn. Will you come up to the drawing-room while I get
him?"

Peggy led the way, drawing meanwhile on the resources of a picturesque
imagination.

"He may be a little while before he can leave the baby, Lord Evelyn. Poor
mite, it's starved with hunger, the way it cries and cries and won't
leave off, and Peter has to cheer it."

Lord Evelyn grunted. The steep stairs made him a little short of breath,
and not sympathetic.

"And even," went on Peggy, stopping outside the drawing-room door,
"even when it does get a feed of milk, it's to-day from one kind of cow,
to-morrow from another. Why, you'd think all the cows in England, turn
and turn about, supplied that poor child with milk; and you know they get
pains from changing. It's not right, poor baby; but what can we and his
father do? The same with his scraps of clothes--this weather he'd a right
to be having new warm ones--but there he lies crying for the cold in his
little thin out-grown things; it brings the tears to one's eyes to see
him. And he's not the only one, either. His father's just out of an
illness, and keeps a cough on the chest because he can't afford a warm
waistcoat or the only cough-mixture that cures him.... But Peter
wouldn't li