y."

"And Peter?"

For a moment Jan hesitated. With heightened colour she met Tony's grave,
searching eyes. Above everything she desired to be always true and
sincere with him, that he might, as on that first night in England, feel
that he "believed" her. "I have every reason to love Mr. Ledgard," she
said slowly: "he was so wonderfully kind to all of us." She was
determined to be loyal to Peter with poor Fay's children. Jan hated
ingratitude. To have said she only liked Peter must have given Tony the
impression that she was both forgetful and ungrateful. She would not
risk that even though she might risk misunderstanding of another kind if
he ever repeated her words to anybody else.

Her heart beat rather faster than was comfortable, and she was thankful
that she and Tony were alone.

"Who _do_ you like?" he asked.

"Nearly everybody; the people in the village, our good neighbours ...
Can't you see the difference yourself? Now, you love your dear Mummy and
you like ... say, William----"

"No," Tony said firmly, "I love William. I don't think," he went on, "I
like people ... much. Either I love them like you said, or I don't care
about them at all ... or I hate them."

"That," said Jan, "is a mistake. It's no use to hate people."

"But if you feel like it ... I hate people if they cheat me."

"But who on earth would cheat you? What do you mean?"

"Once," said Tony, and by the monotonous, detached tone of his voice Jan
knew he was going to talk about his father, "my Daddie asked me if I'd
like to see smoke come out of his ears ... an' he said: 'Put your hand
here on me and watch very careful.'" Tony pointed to Jan's chest. "I put
my hand there and I watched and watched an' he hurt me with the end of
his cigar. There's the mark!" He held out a grubby little hand, back
uppermost, for Jan's inspection, and there, sure enough, was the little
round white scar.

"And what did you do?" she asked.

"I bit him."

"Oh, Tony, how dreadful!"

"I shouldn't of minded so much if he'd really done it--the smoke out of
his ears, I mean; but not one teeniest little puff came. I watched so
careful ... He cheated me."

Jan said nothing. What could she say? Hot anger burned in her heart
against Hugo. She could have bitten him herself.

"Peter was there," Tony went on, "and Peter said it served him right."

"Yes," said Jan, grasping at this straw, "but what did Peter say to
you?"

"He said, 'Sahibs don't cry and sahibs