The scheme of renting a house in London had duly been laid before him, and rejected most decisively by the young gentleman.  His father had never taken a house in town, and he could see no necessity for it.  His aunts were lost in admiration for their nephew’s firmness.  Peter had inherited somewhat of his father’s dictatorial manner, and their flattery did not tend to soften it.  When his aged relatives mispronounced the magic word kopje, or betrayed their belief that a donga was an inaccessible mountain—­he brought the big guns of his heavy satire to bear on the little target of their ignorance without remorse.  He mistook a loud voice, and a habit of laying down the law, for manly decision, and the gift of leadership; and imagined that in talking down his mother’s gentle protests he had convinced her of his superior wisdom.

When he had made it sufficiently clear, however, that he did not wish Lady Mary to accompany him to town, young Sir Peter made haste to depart thither himself, on the very reasonable plea that he required a new outfit of clothes.

Was it possible that his departure brought a dreadful relief to the mother who had prayed day and night, for eight-and-twenty months, that her son might return to her?

She tried and tried, on her knees in her own room, to realize what her feelings would have been if Peter had been killed in South Africa.  She tried to recall the first ecstasy of joy at his home-coming.  She remembered, as she might have remembered a dream, the hours of agony she had passed, looking out over these very blue hills, and dumbly beseeching God to spare her boy—­her only son—­out of all the mothers’ sons who were laying down their lives for England.

A terrible thought assailed her now and then, like an ugly spectre that would not be laid—­that if Peter had died of his wound—­if he had fallen as so many of his comrades had fallen, in the war—­he would have been a hero for all time; a glorious memory, safely enshrined and enthroned above all these miserable petty doubts and disappointments.  She cast the thought from her in horror and piteous grief, and reiterated always her passionate gratitude for his preservation.  But, nevertheless, the living, breathing Peter was a daily and hourly disappointment to the mother who loved him.  His ways were not her ways, nor his thoughts her thoughts; and often she felt that she could have found more to say to a complete stranger, and that a stranger would have understood her better.

The old ladies, returning from their drive, generally took a little turn upon the terrace.  This constituted half their daily exercise, since their morning walk consisted of a stroll round the kitchen garden.

“It prevents cramp after sitting so long,” one would say to the other.

“And it is only right to show the gardener that we take an interest,” the other would reply.

The gardener translated the interest they took into a habit of fault-finding, which nearly drove him mad.