Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/359

 Her breast was heaving, her little hands beat against her frock.

“He shan't,” she broke out at last, “hear about it.”

“Of all the nonsense,” Peter answered her slowly. “Really, Clare, sometimes I think you're about two years old—”

“He shan't hear about it,” she repeated again. “You don't care—you don't care what I think or what I say—I'm his mother—I have the right—”

The baby looked at them both with wondering eyes and to any outside observer would surely have seemed the eldest of the three. Clare's breath came in little pants of rage—“You know—that I hate—all mention of that place—those people. It doesn't matter to you—you never think of me—”

“At any rate,” he retorted, “if you were up here in the nursery more often you would be able to take care that Stephen's innocent ears weren't insulted with my vulgar conversation—”

It was then that he saw, behind Clare, in the doorway, the dark smiling face of Cards.

Cards came forward. “Really, you two,” he said, laughing. “Peter, old man, don't be absurd—you too, Clare” (he called her Clare now).

The anger died out of Clare's eyes: “Well, he knows I hate him talking about that nasty old town to the baby—” Then, in a moment, she was smiling again—“I'm sorry, Peter. Cards is quite right, and anyhow the baby doesn't understand—”

She stood smiling in front of him but the frown did not leave his face.

“Oh! it's all right,” he said sullenly, and he brushed past them up the stairs, to his own room.

From the silence of his room he thought that he could hear them laughing about it downstairs. “Silly old Peter—always getting into tempers—” Well, was he? And after all hadn't it been, this time, her affair? Stephen and he had been happy enough before the others had come