“Here, in Dad’s home,” Cherry said, coming to stand beside him, “I see how wicked and how mad I was.  In another twenty-four hours it would have been too late—­you don’t know how often I wake up in the night and shiver, thinking that!  And as it is, I am here in the dear old house; and Martin—­well, you can see that even Martin’s life is going to be far happier than it ever was!  Yesterday Mrs. Porter spoke to me about getting him a player-piano when he is stronger, you know.  Doctor Young comes in to play cribbage with him—­it’s amazing how the day fills itself!  It’s such a joy to me,” she added, with the radiant look she often wore when her husband’s comfort was under consideration, “to feel that we need never worry about the money end of things—­there’s enough for what we need forever!”

“You must never worry about money,” he told her.  “And if ever you need it—­if it is a question of a long trip, or of more operations—­if there is any chance—­”

“I shall remember that I have a big brother!” she said.

The room was scented by the sweet, damp flowers, and by the good odour of lazily burning logs; yet to Peter there was chill and desolateness in the air.  Cherry took up the glass bowl in both careful hands, and went away in the direction of the study, but he stood at the window for a long time staring dully out at the battered chrysanthemums and the swishing branches, and the steadily falling rain.

CHAPTER XXV

A few days later, on a day of uncertain sunshine and showers, Peter left them.  Martin was the sorrier of the two to see him go, for it seemed to Martin that the tragedy had united Cherry and himself in a peculiar manner, had rounded and secured their relationship, and had made for them a new life that had no place for Peter.  With a sort of affectionate pity for the older man he would have been glad to have him stay longer, to play the old piano, work in the old garden, and share their talks of Alix and of all the old days.  But to Cherry Peter’s going was a relief; it burned one more bridge behind her.  It confirmed her in the path she had chosen; it was to her spirit like the cap that marks the accepted student nurse, or like the black coif that replaces the postulant’s white veil of probation.

He had been in the downstairs bedroom, talking with Martin, for perhaps an hour; he had drawn them a rough sketch of the little addition to the house that Cherry meant some day to build next to the study, and he and Martin had been discussing the details.  Cherry had left them there, and was sweeping the wet, dun-coloured leaves from the old porch, in a pale shaft of sunshine, and thinking that there must be a wide railing here next summer for Martin’s books, and a gay awning to be drawn or furled as Martin fancied, when a sudden step in the doorway behind her made her look up.

Peter had come out of the house, with Buck curving beside him.  He wore his old corduroy clothes and his shabby cap, but there was something in his aspect that made her ask: