“I shall be glad if you will tell him I have called to see him.”

“I will, Lord Evelyn.  Will you come up to the drawing-room while I get him?”

Peggy led the way, drawing meanwhile on the resources of a picturesque imagination.

“He may be a little while before he can leave the baby, Lord Evelyn.  Poor mite, it’s starved with hunger, the way it cries and cries and won’t leave off, and Peter has to cheer it.”

Lord Evelyn grunted.  The steep stairs made him a little short of breath, and not sympathetic.

“And even,” went on Peggy, stopping outside the drawing-room door, “even when it does get a feed of milk, it’s to-day from one kind of cow, to-morrow from another.  Why, you’d think all the cows in England, turn and turn about, supplied that poor child with milk; and you know they get pains from changing.  It’s not right, poor baby; but what can we and his father do?  The same with his scraps of clothes—­this weather he’d a right to be having new warm ones—­but there he lies crying for the cold in his little thin out-grown things; it brings the tears to one’s eyes to see him.  And he’s not the only one, either.  His father’s just out of an illness, and keeps a cough on the chest because he can’t afford a warm waistcoat or the only cough-mixture that cures him....  But Peter wouldn’t like me to be telling you all this.  Will you go in there, Lord Evelyn, and wait?”

She paused another moment, her hand on the handle.

“You’ll not tell Peter I told you anything.  He’d not be pleased.  He’ll not breathe a word to you of it himself—­indeed, he’ll probably say it’s not so.”

Lord Evelyn made no comment; he merely tapped his cane on the floor; he seemed impatient to have the door opened.

“And,” added Peggy, “if ever you chanced to be offering him anything—­I mean, you might be for giving him a birthday present, or a Xmas present or something sometime—­you’d do best to put it as a gift to the baby, or he’ll never take it.”

Having concluded her diplomacy, she opened the door and ushered him into the room, where Hilary sat with his headache and the children played noisily at horses.

“Lord Evelyn Urquhart come to see Peter,” called Peggy into the room.  “Come along out of that, children, and keep yourselves quiet somewhere.”

She bundled them out and shut the door on Lord Evelyn and Hilary.

Hilary rose dizzily to his feet and bowed.  Lord Evelyn returned the courtesy distantly, and stood by the door, as far as possible from his host.

“This is good of you,” said Hilary, “to come and see us in our fallen estate.  Do sit down.”

Lord Evelyn, putting his glass into his eye and turning it upon Hilary as if in astonishment at his impertinence in addressing him, said curtly, “I came to see your half-brother.  I had not the least intention, nor the least desire, to see anyone else whatever; nor have I now.”