“Then I shall take it off.  Peter must be saved!”

Anna sat down at the tiny table and drank her tea.  She felt rather better after the tea.  Harmony, having taken the towel off, was busy over the brick stove.  There was nothing said for a moment.  Then:—­

“I am out of patience with Peter,” said Anna.

“Why?”

“Because he hasn’t fallen in love with you.  Where are his eyes?”

“Please, Anna!”

“It’s better as it is, no doubt, for both of you.  But it’s superhuman of Peter.  I wonder—­”

“Yes?”

“I think I’ll not tell you what I wonder.”

And Harmony, rather afraid of Anna’s frank speech, did not insist.

As she drank her tea and made a pretense at eating, Anna’s thoughts wandered from Peter to Harmony to the letter in her belt and back again to Peter and Harmony.  For some time she had been suspicious of Peter.  From her dozen years of advantage in age and experience she looked down on Peter’s thirty years of youth, and thought she knew something that Peter himself did not suspect.  Peter being unintrospective, Anna did his heart-searching for him.  She believed he was madly in love with Harmony and did not himself suspect it.  As she watched the girl over her teacup, revealing herself in a thousand unposed gestures of youth and grace, a thousand lovelinesses, something of the responsibility she and Peter had assumed came over her.  She sighed and felt for her letter.

“I’ve had rather bad news,” she said at last.

“From home?”

“Yes.  My father—­did you know I have a father?”

“You hadn’t spoken of him.”

“I never do.  As a father he hasn’t amounted to much.  But he’s very ill, and—­I ’ve a conscience.”

Harmony turned a startled face to her.

“You are not going back to America?”

“Oh, no, not now, anyhow.  If I become hag ridden with remorse and do go I’ll find some one to take my place.  Don’t worry.”

The lunch was a silent meal.  Anna was hurrying off as Peter came in, and there was no time to discuss Peter’s new complication with her.  Harmony and Peter ate together, Harmony rather silent.  Anna’s unfortunate comment about Peter had made her constrained.  After the meal Peter, pipe in mouth, carried the dishes to the kitchen, and there it was that he gave her the letter.  What Peter’s slower mind had been a perceptible time in grasping Harmony comprehended at once—­and not only the situation, but its solution.

“Don’t let her have him!” she said, putting down the letter.  “Bring him here.  Oh, Peter, how good we must be to him!”

And that after all was how the thing was settled.  So simple, so obvious was it that these three expatriates, these waifs and estrays, banded together against a common poverty, a common loneliness, should share without question whatever was theirs to divide.  Peter and Anna gave cheerfully of their substance, Harmony of her labor, that a small boy should be saved a tragic knowledge until he was well enough to bear it, or until, if God so willed, he might learn it himself without pain.