him very gingerly lest he should
squash) Rhoda came in. She was strange-eyed and pale in the blurred
light, and greeted Lucy in a dreamy, absent way.

"I've had tea out.... Oh, have you bathed baby? How good of you. I meant
to be in earlier, but I was late.... The fog's awful; it's getting
thicker and thicker."

She sat down by the fire and loosened her coat, and took off her hat and
rubbed the fog from her wet hair, and coughed. Rhoda had grown prettier
lately; she looked less tired and listless, and her eyes were brighter,
and the fire flushed her thin cheek to rose-colour as she bent over it.

Peter took her wet things from her and took off her shoes and put
slippers on her feet, and she gave him an absent smile. Rhoda had had
a dreamy way with her since Thomas's birth; moony, as Peggy, who didn't
approve, called it.

A little later, when Thomas was clean and warm and asleep in his bed,
they were told that Mrs. Urquhart's carriage had come.

Lucy bent over Thomas and kissed him, then over Rhoda. Rhoda whispered in
her ear, without emotion, "Baby ought to have been yours, not mine," and
Lucy whispered back:

"Oh hush, hush!"

Rhoda still held her, still whispered, "Will you love him? Will you be
good to him, always?"

And Lucy answered, opening wide eyes, "Why, of course. No one could help
it, could they?" and on that Rhoda let her go.

Peter thought that Lucy must have infected Rhoda with some of her own
appreciation of Thomas, opened her eyes to his true worth; for during the
next week she was newly tender to him. She bathed him every evening
herself, only letting Peter help a little; she held him in her arms
without wearying of his weight, and wasn't really annoyed even when he
was sick upon her shoulder, an unfortunate habit of Thomas's.

But a habit, Peter thought, that Thomas employed with some
discrimination; for the one and only one time that Guy Vyvian took him
in his arms--or rather submitted to his being put there by Rhoda--Thomas
was sicker than he had ever been before, with an immense completeness.

"Just what I always feel myself," commented Peter in his own mind, as
Thomas was hastily removed. "I'm glad someone has shown him at last what
the best people feel about him."

Vyvian had come to call. It was the first time Peter had met him since
his marriage; he hoped it would be the last. The object of the call
was to inspect Thomas, Rhoda said. Thomas was inspected, produced the
impression i