Then she saw that Peter was in earnest, and with a sigh of regret, Sarah returned the dish of jam-puffs to the basket.

“I couldn’t talk sense, or even listen to it, with those heavenly puffs under my very nose,” she said.  “Now, what is it?”

“I hate telling you—­I hate talking of it,” said Peter, and a dark flush rose to his frowning eyebrows.  He threw himself once more at Sarah’s feet, and turned his face away from her, and towards the blue streak of distant sea.  “John Crewys wants to marry—­my mother,” he said in choking tones.

“Is that all?” said Sarah.  “I’ve seen that for ages.  Aren’t you glad?”

“Glad!” said Peter.

“I thought,” Sarah said innocently, “that you wanted to marry me?”

“Sarah!”

“Well!” said Sarah.  She looked rather oddly at Peter’s recumbent figure.  Then she pushed the loosened waves of her red hair from her forehead with a determined gesture.  “Well,” she said defiantly, “isn’t that one obstacle to our marriage removed?  Your aunts will go to the Dower House, and your mother will leave Barracombe, and you’ll have the place all to yourself.  And you dare to tell me you’re sorry?”

“Yes,” said Peter, sitting up and facing her, “I dare.”

“I’m glad of that,” said Sarah.  Her deep voice softened.  “I should have thought less of you if you hadn’t dared.”

Suddenly she rose from her mossy throne, shook the crumbs off her skirt, and looked down upon Peter with blue eyes sparkling beneath her long lashes, and the fresh red colour deepening and spreading in her cheeks, until even the tips of her delicate ears and her creamy throat turned pink.

“Well,” said Sarah, “go and stop it.  Make your mother sorry and ashamed.  It would be very easy.  Tell her she’s too old to be happy.  But say good-bye to me first.”

“Sarah!”

“Why is it to be all sunshine for you, and all shade for her?” said Sarah.  “Hasn’t she wept enough to please you?  Mayn’t she have her St. Martin’s summer?  God gives it to her.  Will you take it away?”

“Sarah!”

He looked up at her crimsoned tearful face in dismay.  Was this Sarah the infantile—­the pink-and-white—­the seductive, laughing, impudent Sarah?  And yet how passionately Peter admired her in this mood of virago, which he had never seen since the days of her childish rages of long ago.

“Why do you suppose,” said Sarah, disdainfully, “that I’ve been letting you follow me about all this summer, and desert her; except to show her how little you are to be depended upon?  To bring home to her how foolish she’d be to fling away her happiness for your sake. You, who at one word from me, were willing to turn her out of her own home, to live in a wretched little villa at your very door.  Don’t interrupt me,” said Sarah, stamping, “and say you weren’t willing.  You told her so.  I meant you to tell her, and yet—­I could have killed you, Peter, when I heard her sweet voice faltering out to me, that she would be ready and glad to give up her place to her boy’s wife, whenever the time should come.”