“I’m glad I’m like him,” said Peter.

She sighed.  “How I used to wish you were a little tiny bit like me too!”

“But I’m not, am I?”

“No, you’re not.  Not one tiny bit,” she answered wistfully.  “But you do love me, Peter?”

“Haven’t I proved I love you?” said Peter; and she perceived that his feelings were hurt.  “Coming back, and—­and thinking only of you, and—­and of never leaving you any more.  Why, mother”—­for in an agony of love and remorse she was clinging to him and sobbing, with her face pressed against his empty sleeve—­“why, mother,” Peter repeated, in softened tones, “of course I love you.”

The drawing-room door was cautiously opened, and Peter’s aunts came into the hall on tiptoe, followed by the canon.

“Ah, I thought so,” said Lady Belstone, in the self-congratulatory tones of the successful prophet, “it has been too much for poor Mary.  She has been overcome by the joy of dear Peter’s return.”

CHAPTER XII

“Try my salts, dear Mary,” said Miss Crewys, hastening to apply the remedies which were always to be found in her black velvet reticule.

“I blame myself,” said the canon, distressfully—­“I blame myself.  I should have insisted on breaking the news to her gently.”

Lady Mary smiled upon them all.  “On the contrary,” she said, “I was offering, not a moment ago, to take Peter round and show him the improvements.  We have been so much occupied with each other that he has not had time to look round him.”

“I wish he may think them improvements, my love,” said Lady Belstone.

Miss Crewys, joyously scenting battle, hastened to join forces with her sister.

“We are far from criticizing any changes your dear mother may have been induced to make,” she said; “but as your Aunt Isabella has frequently observed to me, what can a Londoner know of landscape gardening?”

“A Londoner?” said Peter.

“Your guardian, my boy,” said the canon, nervously.  “He has slightly opened out the views; that is all your good aunt is intending to say.”

Peter’s good aunt opened her mouth to contradict this assertion indignantly, but Lady Mary broke in with some impatience.

“I do not mean the trees.  Of course the house was shut in far too closely by the trees at the back and sides.  We wanted more air, more light, more freedom.”  She drew a long breath and flung out her hands in unconscious illustration.  “But there are many very necessary changes that—­that Peter will like to see,” said Lady Mary, glancing almost defiantly at the pursed-up mouths and lowered eyelids of the sisters.

Peter walked suddenly into the middle of the banqueting-hall and looked round him.

“Why, what’s come to the old place?  It’s—­it’s changed somehow.  What have you been doing to it?” he demanded.

“Don’t you—­don’t you like it, Peter?” faltered Lady Mary.  “The roof was not safe, you know, and had to be mended, and—­and when it was all done up, the furniture and curtains looked so dirty and ugly and inappropriate.  I sent them away and brought down some of the beautiful old things that belonged to your great-grandmother, and made the hall brighter and more livable.”