“I know I used,” Peter agreed; “but oh, mother, if you knew how sick I’ve been now and then with longing to get back to it!  I made up my mind a thousand times how it should all be when I came home again; and that you and me would be everything in the world to each other, as you used to wish when I was a selfish boy, thinking only of getting away and being independent.  I’m afraid I used to be rather selfish, mother?”

“Perhaps you were—­a little,” said Lady Mary.

“You will never have to complain of that again,” said Peter.

She looked at him with a faint, pathetic smile.

“I shall take care of you, and look after you, just as my father used to do,” said Peter.  “Now you rest quietly here”—­and he gently laid her down among the cushions on the sofa—­“whilst I take a look round the old place.”

“Let me come with you, darling.”

“Good heavens, no!  I should tire you to death.  My father never liked you to go climbing about.”

“I am much more active than I used to be,” said Lady Mary.

“No, no; you must lie down, you look quite pale.”  Peter’s voice took an authoritative note, which came very naturally to him.  “The sudden joy of my return has been too much for you, poor old mum.”

He leant over her fondly, and kissed the sweet, pale face, and then regarded her in a curious, doubtful manner.

“You’re changed, mother.  I can’t think what it is.  Isn’t your hair done differently—­or something?”

Poor Lady Mary lifted both hands to her head, and looked at him with something like alarm in her blue eyes.

“Is it?  Perhaps it is,” she faltered.  “Don’t you like it, Peter?”

“I like the old way best,” said Peter.

“But this is so much more becoming, Peter.”

“A fellow doesn’t care,” said Peter, loftily, “whether his mother’s hair is becoming or not.  He likes to see her always the same as when he was a little chap.”

“It is—­sweet of you, to have such a thought,” murmured Lady Mary.  She took her courage in both hands.  “But the other way is out of fashion, Peter.”

“Why, mother, you never used to follow the fashions before I went away; you won’t begin now, at your age, will you?”

“At my age” repeated Lady Mary, blankly.  Then she looked at him with that wondering, pathetic smile, which seemed to have replaced already, since Peter came home, the joyousness which had timidly stolen back from her vanished youth.  “At my age!” said Lady Mary; “you are not very complimentary, Peter.”

“You don’t expect a fellow to pay compliments to his mother,” said Peter, staring at her.  “Why, mother, what has come to you?  And besides—­”

“Besides?”

“I’m sure papa hated compliments, and all that sort of rot,” Peter blurted out, in boyish fashion.  “Don’t you remember how fond he was of quoting, ’Praise to the face is open disgrace’?”