g
known, that he could really play in earnest. The reverse art--handling
serious issues with a light touch--he was less good at. Grave subjects,
like the blue of the sea or the shape of a goblet, he approached with the
same solidity of earnestness which he brought to bear on sand cathedrals.
It was just this that made him a little tiring.

But the three together on the sands made a happy and congruous party of
absorbed children, till Cheriton the energetic came swinging back over
the sand-hills. Peter saw him approaching, watched the resolute lunge
of his stride. His mother was about to be married for the third time: one
could well believe it.

"I hope he is going to be nicer to me to-day," Peter thought. Even as he
hoped it, and before Cheriton saw the party on the sands, Peter saw the
determined face stiffen, and into the vivid eyes came the blank look of
one who is cutting somebody. Peter turned and looked behind him to see
who it was, and saw Mr. Guy Vyvian approaching. It was obvious from his
checked recognition that he thought he knew Cheriton, and that Cheriton
did not share the opinion. Peter saw Vyvian's mortified colour rise; he
was a vain and sensitive person.

Cheriton came and sat down among them. His words as he did so, audibly
muttered, were, "The most unmitigated cad!" He looked angry. Then he saw
Peter, and seemed a little surprised, but did not cut him; he hardly
could. Peter supposed that he owed this only to the accident of
Urquhart's presence, since this young man seemed to go about the world
ignoring everyone who did not please his fastidious fancy, and Peter
could not hope that he had done that.

Peter looked after Vyvian's retreating figure. He could detect injured
pride in his back.

He got up and brushed the sand from him.

"I must go and talk to that man," he said. "He's lodging with my
brother."

The situation for a moment was slightly difficult. Leslie and Urquhart
had both heard Cheriton's description of Peter's brother's lodger.
Besides, they had seen him, and that was enough.

It was unlike Peter to make awkward situations. He ended this one
abruptly by leaving it to itself, and walking away after his brother's
lodger.

Vyvian greeted him huffily. It needed all Peter's feeling for a hurt man
to make him anything but distantly aloof. Cheriton's description was so
manifestly correct. The man was a cad--an oily bounder with a poisonous
mind. Peter wondered how Hilary could bear t