“To-night’s the night we go to Peter?” Cherry stated rather than asked.  “Do you remember,” she glanced at her father, who was reading his paper, “do you remember when Dad always used to scold us for being rude to Peter?”

“Well, I’d rather go to Peter’s for dinner than anywhere else I ever go!” Alix remarked, dreamily.  “Seriously, I mean it!” she repeated as Cherry looked at her in amused surprise.  “In the first place, I love his bungalow—­tiny as it is, it has the whole of a little canyon to itself, and the prettiest view in the valley, I think.  And then I love the messy sitting room, with all the books and music, and I love the way Peter entertains.  I wish,” she added, simply, “that I liked Peter half as well as I do his house!”

“Peter’s a dear!” Cherry contended.

“Oh, I know he is!” Alix said, quickly.  “Peter’s always been a dear, of course.  But I mean in a special sense—­” finished Alix with an entirely unembarrassed grin.

Cherry, through a glittering cloud of hair, looked at her steadily.  Suddenly she gave an odd laugh.

“Do you know I never thought of Peter like that?” she said.

Alix nodded with a cautious look at her father who was out of hearing.

“No, nor I!  We’ve always taken him rather for granted,” she admitted.  “Only I’ve been rather wishing, lately, that Peter wasn’t such an unflattering, big-brotherish, every-day-neighbour sort of person.”

Still Cherry regarded her steadily with an awakening look in her eyes.

“Why lately?” she asked.

“Because,” said Alix, briskly and unromantically, “I think Peter would like me to—­well, to stop taking him for granted!”

“But Peter’s lame—­” Cherry submitted, doubtfully.

“You can’t call a shortness left from a broken leg lame!” Alix protested.  “Peter isn’t brawny, but he’s never been ill.  And he’s not a child.  He’s thirty-seven.  And I imagine he’s awfully lonely.  And then I imagine it would please Dad—­” “Dad has always been ridiculously fond of him,” Cherry said, thoughtfully.  Peter—­ possibly in love with Alix!  She had never even suspected it.  Peter’s attitude toward them all had been more paternal than anything else.  Cherry and her sister could not remember life without Peter, but he had always been Dad’s friend, rather than theirs.  He had rebuked them; he had patiently asked them not to chatter so; he had criticized their grammar and their clothes and their friends.

Peter and Alix.  Well, there was something rather pleasant in the thought after all, if Alix didn’t mind his ugliness and thinness.  Cherry thought about it all day.  She had had no thought of money a year or two ago; but she was more experienced now.  And Peter was rich.

Ordinarily she would have said that she was not going to change for Peter’s dinner; but this afternoon, without mentioning the fact, she quietly got into one of her prettiest dresses; a dress that had been made in the long-ago excitement of trousseau days.  Peter as a rather autocratic and critical neighbour was one thing; as a possible brother-in-law he was another.