Neither of them said, in word or manner, “Why didn’t you come like this before?” Deb knew that her welcome would have been the same, and had hard work not to show too frankly her sense of their magnanimity.  As it was, she nearly kissed Peter in the hall—­such a nice, warm, comfortable, hospitable entrance to as comfortable a home (in its undeniably middle-class style) as she had ever been inside of—­the more striking in its effect by contrast with Mary’s.  Peter’s cuffs were like the driven snow; he was charmingly fresh and clean, well barbered and well tailored; grown quite handsome, too, now that he had filled out and matured.  As for Rose—­“I hear,” Frances wrote from Paris, “that poor Rose has become a perfect tub.”  Mrs Peter was almost as broad as she was long.  But what health in the sunny face!  What opulent well-being in the full curves of her figure, gowned in a fashion to satisfy even Deb’s exigent taste.

They did not tell her it was good of her to come to see them, but they told her in all the languages of courtesy that they were mighty glad she had come.  She was taken into the drawing-room—­full of soft chairs and sofas that anybody might sit on, and with a fire of clear coals in a grate that glittered with constant polishing.  But everything in Peter’s establishment seemed to shine with pure cleanliness; he took after his mother, who, modest in other things, was fond of offering a sovereign to anybody who would find a cobweb in her house.

Deb was peeled of her furs by Peter, with the greatest deference and politeness, but with none of the obsequiousness that had sickened her elsewhere; he laid down her sable cloak with the reverence of one who knew its value, and he asked Rose in a whisper if her sister would like a glass of wine before lunch.  The smiling matron shook her head, and whispered something else, which sent him out of the room.  Then, while he skipped about in the background, attending to the wines and beers, she convoyed the guest to the very luxurious bedroom where head-nurse Keziah dandled the youngest of the Breen children.  The rest had had their dinners and gone out a-walking, so as not to be made too much of by a silly mother, if it could be helped.  Warm was the greeting between Keziah and her late mistress, and many the questions about Redford and the old folks; but there was no hint that Mrs Moon hankered after the big store-rooms and linen-closets, the dignities and privileges of her former home.  Her heart was with Rose’s babies now.

“There, what do you think of this?” she demanded, as she proudly displayed her charge, and, being invited thereto, condescendingly laid it in Deb’s outstretched arms.

It was a pretty, healthy creature, fat, dainty and about two months old, still in the whitest and finest of long clothes.  “Little duck!” Deb crooned, and rubbed her cheek almost with passion on its rose-leaf skin.  Robert’s nose, indeed, was dislocated on the spot.