“No,” said Honora.  “I should want to go on and see everything in the world worth seeing.  Sometimes I feel positively as though I should die if I had to stay here in St. Louis.”

“You probably would die—­eventually,” said Peter.

Honora was justifiably irritated.

“I could shake you, Peter!”

He laughed.

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t do any good,” he answered.

“If I were a man,” she proclaimed, “I shouldn’t stay here.  I’d go to New York—­I’d be somebody—­I’d make a national reputation for myself.”

“I believe you would,” said Peter sadly, but with a glance of admiration.

“That’s the worst of being a woman—­we have to sit still until something happens to us.”

“What would you like to happen?” he asked, curiously.  And there was a note in his voice which she, intent upon her thoughts, did not remark.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said; “anything—­anything to get out of this rut and be something in the world.  It’s dreadful to feel that one has power and not be able to use it.”

The car stopped at the terminal.  Thanks to the early hour of Aunt Mary’s dinner, the western sky was still aglow with the sunset over the forests as they walked past the closed grille of the Dwyer mansion into the park.  Children rolled on the grass, while mothers and fathers, tired out from the heat and labour of a city day, sat on the benches.  Peter stooped down and lifted a small boy, painfully thin, who had fallen, weeping, on the gravel walk.  He took his handkerchief and wiped the scratch on the child’s forehead.

“There, there!” he said, smiling, “it’s all right now.  We must expect a few tumbles.”

The child looked at him, and suddenly smiled through his tears.

The father appeared, a red-headed Irishman.

“Thank you, Mr. Erwin; I’m sure it’s very kind of you, sir, to bother with him,” he said gratefully.  “It’s that thin he is with the heat, I take him out for a bit of country air.”

“Why, Tim, it’s you, is it?” said Peter.  “He’s the janitor of our building down town,” he explained to Honora, who had remained a silent witness to this simple scene.  She had been, in spite of herself, impressed by it, and by the mingled respect and affection in the janitor’s manner towards Peter.  It was so with every one to whom he spoke.  They walked on in silence for a few moments, into a path leading to a lake, which had stolen the flaming green-gold of the sky.

“I suppose,” said Honora, slowly, “it would be better for me to wish to be contented where I am, as you are.  But it’s no use trying, I can’t.”

Peter was not a preacher.

“Oh,” he said, “there are lots of things I want.”

“What?” demanded Honora, interested.  For she had never conceived of him as having any desires whatever.

“I want a house like Mr. Dwyer’s,” he declared, pointing at the distant imposing roof line against the fading eastern sky.