love to have you two children with us, but ..."

But Peter, to whom other people's minds were as books that who runs may
read, had no intention of coming with them. That faculty of intuition of
Peter's had drawbacks as well as advantages. He knew, as well as if
Hilary had said so, that Hilary considered their life together a
disastrous series of mishaps, largely owing to Peter, and that he did not
desire to continue it. He knew precisely what was Denis Urquhart's point
of view and state of feelings towards himself and his family, and how
unbridgeable that gulf was. He knew why Lucy was stopping away, and
would stop away (for if other people's thoughts were to him as pebbles in
running water, hers were pebbles seen white and lucid in a still, clear
pool). And he knew very well that he relieved Peggy's kind heart when he
said he and Thomas would stop in London; for to Peggy anything was better
than to worry her poor old Hilary more than need be.

So, before March was out, about St. Cuthbert's day, in fact, Hilary
Margerison and his family left England for a more distressful country,
to seek their fortunes fresh, and Peter and his family sought modest
apartments in a little street behind St. Austin's Church, where the
apartments are very modest indeed.

"Are they too modest for you, Thomas?" Peter asked dubiously. "And do you
too much hate the Girl?"

The Girl was the landlady's daughter, and undertook for a small
consideration to look after Thomas while Peter was out, and feed him at
suitable intervals. Thomas and Peter did rather hate her, for she was a
slatternly girl, matching her mother and her mother's apartments, and
didn't always take her curlers off till the evening, and said "Boo" to
Thomas, merely because he was young--a detestable habit, Peter and
Thomas considered. Peter had to make a great deal of sensible
conversation to Thomas, to make up.

"I'm sorry," Peter apologised, "but, you see, Thomas, it's all we can
afford. You don't earn anything at all, and I only earn a pound a week,
which is barely enough to keep you in drink. I don't deserve even that,
for I don't address envelopes well; but I suppose they know it's such a
detestable job that they haven't the face to give me less."

Peter was addressing envelopes because a Robinson relative had given him
the job, and he hadn't the nerve to refuse it. He couldn't well refuse
it, because of Thomas. Uncompanioned by Thomas he would probably have
chosen ins