r granted that Peter must be
different. Whatever his outward humours, he was _her_ son; rather a
part of herself, in her loving fancy, than a separate individual.

The moment of awakening had been long in coming to Lady Mary; the
moment when a mother has to find out that her personality is not
necessarily reproduced in her child; that the being who was once the
unconscious consoler of her griefs and troubles may develop a nature
perfectly antagonistic to her own.

She had kept her eyes shut with all her might for a long time, but
necessity was forcing them open.

Perhaps her association with John Crewys made it easier to see Peter
as he was, and not as she had wished him to be.

And yet, she thought miserably to herself, he had certainly tried hard
to be affectionate and kind to her--and probably it did not occur to
him, as it did to his mother, how pathetic it was that he should have
to try.

Peter did not think much about it.

Sometimes, during his short stay at Barracombe, he had walked through
a game of croquet with his mother--it was good practice for his left
hand--or he listened disapprovingly to something she inadvertently
(forgetting he was not John) read aloud for his sympathy or
admiration; or he took a short stroll with her; or bestowed his
company upon her in some other dutiful fashion. But these filial
attentions over, if he yawned with relief--why, he never did so in her
presence, and would have been unable to understand that Lady Mary saw
him yawning, in her mind's eye, as plainly as though he had indulged
this bad habit under her very nose. He bestowed a portion of his
time on his aunts in much the same spirit, taking less trouble to be
affectionate, because they were less exacting, as he would have put it
to himself, than she was.

The scheme of renting a house in London had duly been laid before him,
and rejected most decisively by the young gentleman. His father had
never taken a house in town, and he could see no necessity for it. His
aunts were lost in admiration for their nephew's firmness. Peter had
inherited somewhat of his father's dictatorial manner, and their
flattery did not tend to soften it. When his aged relatives
mispronounced the magic word _kopje_, or betrayed their belief that a
_donga_ was an inaccessible mountain--he brought the big guns of his
heavy satire to bear on the little target of their ignorance without
remorse. He mistook a loud voice, and a habit of laying down t