him at all when he came forward, but she smiled down at Robin, who was clinging on to Peter's trousers.
“This is a friend of mine, Mr. Westcott,” Miss Monogue said.
She turned gravely and met him. They shook hands and then she sat down; suddenly she bent down and took Robin into her lap. He sat there sucking his thumb, and taking every now and again a sudden look at her hair and the light that the candles made on it, but he was very silent and quiet which was unlike him because he generally hated strangers.
Peter sat down and was filled with embarrassment; his heart also was beating very quickly.
“I have met you before,” he said suddenly. “You don't remember.”
“No—I'm afraid—”
“You had once, a great many years ago, a dog called Crumpet. Once in Cornwall . . . one Good Friday, he tumbled into a lime-pit. A boy—”
“Why, of course,” she broke in, “I remember you perfectly. Why of all the things! Norah, do you realise? Your friend and I have known each other for eight years. Isn't the world a small place! Why I remember perfectly now!”
She turned and talked to Norah Monogue, and whilst she talked he took her in. Although now she was grown up she was still strangely like that little girl in Cornwall. He realised that now, as he looked at her, he had still something of the same feeling about her as he had had then—that she was some one to be cared for, protected, something fragile that the world might break if she were not guarded.
She was porcelain but without anything of Meredith's “rogue.” Because Peter was strong and burly the contrast of her appealing fragility attracted him all the more. Had she not been so perfectly proportioned her size would have been a defect; but now it was simple that her delicacy of colour and feature demanded that slightness and slenderness of build. Her hair was of so burning a red-gold that its colour gave her precisely the setting that she required. She seemed, as she sat there, a little helpless,
