Peter said much this same thing to himself quite often during the following week, and always with a groan.  Dorothy was continually putting her finger in.  Yet it was in the main a happy time to Peter.  His friend treated him very nicely for the most part, if very variably.  Peter never knew in what mood he should find her.  Sometimes he felt that Leonore considered him as the dirt under her little feet.  Then again, she could not be too sweet to him.  There was an evening—­a dinner—­at which he sat between Miss Biddle and Leonore when, it seemed to Peter, Leonore said and looked such nice things, that the millennium had come.  Yet the next morning, she told him that:  “It was a very dull dinner.  I talked to nobody but you.”

Fortunately for Peter, the D’Allois were almost as new an advent in Newport, so Leonore was not yet in the running.  But by the time Peter’s first week had sped, he found that men were putting their fingers in, as well as Dorothy.  Morning, noon, and night they gathered Then lunches, teas, drives, yachts and innumerable other affairs also plunged their finders in.  Peter did not yield to the superior numbers, he went wherever Leonore went.  But the other men went also, and understood the ropes far better.  He fought on, but a sickening feeling began to creep over him of impending failure.  It was soon not merely how Leonore treated him; it was the impossibility of getting her to treat him at all.  Even though he was in the same house, it seemed as if there was always some one else calling or mealing, or taking tea, or playing tennis or playing billiards, or merely dropping in.  And then Leonore took fewer and fewer meals at home, and spent fewer and fewer hours there.  One day Peter had to translate those despatches all by himself!  When he had a cup of tea now, even with three or four men about, he considered himself lucky.  He understood at last what Miss De Voe had meant when she had spoken of the difficulty of seeing enough of a popular girl either to love her or to tell her of it.  They prayed for rain in church on Sunday, on account of the drought, and Peter said “Amen” with fervor.  Anything to end such fluttering.

At the end of two weeks, Peter said sadly that he must be going.

“Rubbish,” said Watts.  “You are to stay for a month.”

“I hope you’ll stay,” said Mrs. D’Alloi.

Peter waited a moment for some one else to speak.  Some one else didn’t.

“I think I must,” he said.  “It isn’t a matter of my own wishes, but I’m needed in Syracuse.”  Peter spoke as if Syracuse was the ultimate of human misery.

“Is it necessary for you to be there?” asked Leonore.

“Not absolutely, but I had better go.”

Later in the day Leonore said, “I’ve decided you are not to go to Syracuse.  I shall want you here to explain what they do to me.”

And that cool, insulting speech filled Peter with happiness.

“I’ve decided to stay another week,” he told Mrs. D’Alloi.