They went home through the fog, Rhoda clinging to Peter’s arm as to an anchor in a sweeping sea.  A great peace and security possessed her; she no longer started at the tall figures that loomed by.

They let themselves into 51 Brook Street, and blinked at one another in the lamp-lit, linoleumed little hall.  Rhoda looked at herself in the glass, and said, “What a fright I am!” seeing her tear-stained countenance and straggling fog-wet locks.  The dinner-bell rang, and she ran upstairs to tidy herself.  Peter and she came into the dining-room together, during the soup.

“Let’s tell them at once, Peter,” whispered Rhoda; so Peter obediently said, as he sat down by Peggy, “Rhoda and I have just settled to marry.”

“Marry?” Hilary queried, from the end of the table.  “Marry whom?” And Rhoda, blushing, laughed for the first time for some days.

Peggy said, “Don’t be silly, Hilary.  Each other, of course, the darlings mean.  Well, well, and to think I never guessed that all this time!”

“Oh,” said Miss Clegson, “I did, Mrs. Margerison; I had a very shrewd suspicion, I assure you.  And this evening, when Mr. Peter asked me where Miss Johnson was gone, and I told him into church, and he followed her straight away, I said to myself, ’Well, that looks like something we all know about very well!’ I didn’t say it to anyone else; I wouldn’t breathe a word till all was settled; I knew you asked me in confidence, Mr. Peter; but I thought the more.  I was always one to see things; they used to tell me I could see through a stone wall.  Well, I’m sure I offer my congratulations to both of you.”

“And I too, with all my heart,” said Miss Matthews, the lady who did not attend ritualistic churches.  “Do I understand that the happy arrangement was made in church, Miss Johnson?  I gather from Miss Clegson that Mr. Peter followed you there.”

“Oh, not inside, Miss Matthews,” said Rhoda, blushing again, and looking rather pretty.  “In the porch, we were.”

Miss Matthews sniffed faintly.  Such goings-on might, she conveyed, be expected in the porch of St. Austin’s, with all that incense coming through the door, and all that confessing going on inside.

“Well,” said Mr. Bridger, “we ought to have some champagne to drink success to the happy event.  Short of that, let us fill the festive bumpers with the flowing lemonade.  Pass the jug down.  Here’s to you, Miss Rhoda; here’s to you, Mr. Peter Margerison.  May you both be as happy as you deserve.  No one will want me to wish you anything better than that, I’m sure.”

“Here’s luck, you dears,” said Peggy, drinking.  Engagements in general delighted her, and Peter’s in particular.  And poor little Rhoda was looking so bright and happy at last.  Peggy wouldn’t have taken it upon herself to call it a remarkably suitable alliance had she been asked; but then she hadn’t been asked, and Peter was such a sweet-natured, loving, lovable dear that he would get on with anyone, and Rhoda, though sometimes a silly and sometimes fractious, was a dear little girl too.  The two facts that would have occurred to some sisters-in-law, that they had extremely few pennies between them, and that Rhoda wasn’t precisely of Peter’s gentle extraction, didn’t bother Peggy at all.