She sniffed a little, and dabbed her handkerchief at her eyes.

“It’s all very well, Peter, but you do care for her a lot, you know you do.”

“But of course I do,” said Peter, laying his cheek against her knee.  “You don’t mind, Rhoda, do you?”

“You care for her,” said Rhoda, but softening under his caresses, “and you care for her husband.  You care for him awfully, Peter; more than for her really, I believe; more than for anyone in the world, don’t you?”

“Don’t,” said Peter, his voice muffled against her dress.  “I can’t compare one thing with another like that, and I don’t want to.  Isn’t one’s caring for each of the people one knows quite different from every other?  Isn’t yours?  Can you say which you love best, the sun rising over the river, or St. Mark’s, or a Bellini Madonna?  Of course you can’t, and it’s immoral to try.  So I’m not going to place Lucy and Denis and you and Rodney and Peggy and the kitten in a horrid class-list.  I won’t.  Do you hear?”

He drew one of her small thin hands down to his lips, then moved it up and placed it on his head, and drew it gently to and fro, ruffling his hair.

“You’re a silly, Peter,” said Rhoda, and there was peace.

Very soon after that Lucy came.  She came in the afternoon before Peter got home, and Rhoda looked with listless interest at the small, wide-eyed person in a grey frock and big grey hat that made her small, pale face look like a white flower.  Pretty?  Rhoda wasn’t sure.  Very like Peter; so perhaps not pretty; only one liked to look at her.  Clever?  It didn’t transpire that she was.  Witty?  Well, much more amused than amusing; and when she was amused she came out with Peter’s laugh, which Rhoda wasn’t sure was in good taste on her part.  Absurdly like Peter she was, to look at and to listen to, and in some inner essence which was beyond definition.  The thought flashed through Rhoda’s mind that it was no wonder these two found things to tell each other every other Sunday; they would be interested in all the same things, so it must be easy.

Remotely, dully, Rhoda thought these things, as things which didn’t concern her particularly.  Less and less each day she had grown to care whether Peter found his cousin Lucy a kindred spirit or not.  She could work herself up into a fit of petulant jealousy about it at times; but it didn’t touch her inmost being; it was a very surface grievance.

So she looked at Lucy dispassionately, and let herself, without a struggle, be caught and held by that ingenuous charm, a charm as of a small woodland flower set dancing by the winds of spring.  She noticed that when the kitten that was now nearly a cat sprang on to Lucy’s lap, she stroked its fur backwards with her flat hand and spread fingers precisely as Peter always did.