He determined to keep to this plan, which, of course, would not prevent his returning to New York early enough next day for the first opening of the first shop.  He wished there were not so many shops.  Unless luck were with him on his search, he might not reach the dryad for days.

In spite of all that had happened, midnight was not long past when Peter tiptoed softly through the quiet house at home and opened the door of his own den.  He had expected to find the room in darkness, but to his surprise the green-shaded reading lamp on the book-scattered mahogany table was alight, and there in the horsehair-covered rocking-chair sat mother with her inevitable work.  Close by the window was wide open, and the night breeze from over the Sound was rhythmically waving the white dimity curtains.

The sweetness of home-coming swept over Peter with the perfume of wallflowers which blew in on the wind—­a sweetness almost as poignant as that of fresias.  Half unconsciously he had been wishing to see his mother—­perhaps not even to speak, but just to see her placid face in its kind womanliness.  It was almost as if his wish had been whispered to her telepathically and she had answered it.  She made a charming picture, too, he thought, in the shadowy room where the pale, moving curtains in the dimness were like spirits bringing peace, and all the light focussed upon the white-haired, white-gowned woman in the high, black chair seemed to radiate from her whiteness.

Mother looked up, pleased but not surprised, as the opening door framed her son.

“Howdy do, deary!” She smiled at him.  “I thought you’d be coming along about this time.”

Peter threw his hat and coat at the whale, whose large, shining surface hospitably received them.  Mrs. Rolls’s small, plump feet in cheap Japanese slippers rested upon a “hassock” on whose covering reposed (in worsted) a black spaniel with blue high lights.  This animal she had herself created before the birth of Peter or Ena, but it was as bright a beast as if it had been finished yesterday.  No one at Sea Gull Manor except Peter would have given Fido house room.  But he liked the dog, and now sat down on it, lifting his mother’s little feet to place them on his knee.

“You oughtn’t to have waited up,” he remarked, having kissed her snow-white hair and both apple-pink cheeks and settled himself more or less comfortably on Fido.

“I thought I would,” she returned placidly.  “I like being here.  And I had just this to finish.”  She held up a wide strip of crocheted lace.  “It’s ‘most done now.  It’s go’n’ to be a bedspread for Ena.  But I don’t know if she—–­”

Mrs. Rolls did not finish the sentence, but it was a long, long ago established custom of hers not to finish sentences.  Except when alone with Petro, she seldom made any attempt to bring one to an end.  It was life at Peter senior’s side which had got her out of the habit of trying to complete what she began to say.  As he generally interrupted her when she spoke, even in their early years together, she had almost unconsciously taken it for granted that he would do so, and stopped like a rundown mechanical doll at about the place where her quick-minded husband was due to break in.