Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/225

 Peter escaped to Robin. He glowered down at the child who was sitting up in his cot counting the flowers on the old wall-paper to keep himself awake.

“I always am so muddled after fourteen,” he said. “Never mind, I'm not sleeping—”

Peter frowned at him. “You ought to have been asleep long ago,” he said. He wished the boy hadn't got his hair tousled in that absurdly fascinating way and that his cheeks weren't flushed so beautiful a red—also his night-gown had lost a button at the top and showed a very white little neck. Peter blinked his eyes—“Look here, kid, you must go to sleep right away at once. What do you want?”

“It's that lion—the one the lady had—I want it.”

“You can't have it—the lady's got it.”

“Well—take me to see them—the real ones—there are lots somewhere Mother says.” Robin inserted his very small hand into Peter's large one.

“All right, one day—we'll go to the Zoo.”

Robin sighed with satisfaction—he lay down and murmured sleepily to himself, “I love Mister Peter and lions and Mother and God,” and was suddenly asleep.

Peter bent down over the cot and kissed him. He felt miserably wretched. He had known nothing like it since that day when he had said good-bye to his mother. He wondered that he could ever have felt any exultation; he wondered that writing and glory and ambition could ever have seemed worth anything to him at all. Could he have had his prayer granted he would have prayed that he might always stay in Brockett's, always have these same friends, watch over Robin as he grew up, talk to Norah Monogue—and then all the others and Mr. Zanti. He felt fourteen years old more miserable than he had ever been.

He kissed Robin again—then he went down to find Mrs. Brockett. Here, too, he was faced with an unexpected difficulty. The good lady, listening to him sternly in her grim little sitting-room, refused to hear of his departure. She sat upright in her stiff chair, her thin black dress in folds about her, the gas-light shining on her neatly parted hair.

“You see, Mrs. Brockett,” he explained to her, “I'm