“I suppose he’s very clever,” she said to Peter.

“Yes,” Peter agreed.

But even that didn’t further him in Rhoda’s regard.  She thought him rude, as indeed he was, though he tried to conceal it.  He seldom spoke to her, and when he did it was with an unadorned brevity that offended her.  Mostly he let her alone, and saw Peter when he could outside his home.  Rodney, himself a celibate, thought matrimony a mistake, though certainly a necessary mistake if the human race was to continue to adorn the earth—­a doubtful ornament to it, in Rodney’s opinion.

Rhoda said one evening to Peter, “You don’t see anything of your friends the Urquharts now, do you?”

“No,” said Peter, who was stroking the kitten’s fur the wrong way, to bring sparks out of it before the gas was lit.  “They’ve been in the country all the winter.”

“Mr. Urquhart got elected a member, didn’t he?” said Rhoda, without much interest.

“Yes,” said Peter.

“I suppose they’ll be coming up to town soon, then, for him to attend Parliament.”

Peter supposed they would.

“When last Lucy wrote, she said they were coming up this month.”

“Have you heard from her again, since Monday week?” enquired Rhoda.

“No.  We write alternate Sundays, you know.  We always have.  Last Sunday it was my turn.”

“Fancy going on all these years so regular,” said Rhoda.  “I couldn’t, not to any of my cousins.  I should use up all there was to say.”

“Oh, but there are quite new things every fortnight,” Peter explained.

Certainly it wasn’t easy to picture Rhoda corresponding with any of the Johnson relatives once a fortnight.

“I expect you and she have heaps to tell each other always when you meet,” said Rhoda, a little plaintive note in her weak voice.

Peter considered.

“Not so much to tell exactly as to talk about.  Yes, there’s lots to say....  She’s coming to see you, Rhoda, directly they come up to town.  It’s so funny to think you and she have never met.”

“Is it?  Well, I don’t know.  I’ve not met any of your cousins really, have I?”

Rhoda was in one of her slightly pettish moods this evening.  Peter didn’t better matters by saying, “Oh, well, none of the others count.  Lucy and I have always been different from most cousins, I suppose; more like brother and sister, I daresay.”

Rhoda looked at him sharply.  She was in a fault-finding mood.

“You think more of her than you do of anyone else.  Of course, I know that.”

Peter was startled.  He stopped stroking the kitten and looked at her through the dim firelight.  The suspicion of a vulgar scene was in the air, and frightened him.  Then he remembered that Rhoda was in frail health, and said very gently, “Oh, Rhoda darling, don’t say silly things, like a young gurl in a novelette,” and slithered along the floor and laid his arm across her lap and laughed up into her face.