With a weak, childish word his anger seemed to explode and die away.
After all, no anger of Peter's could last long. And somehow, illogically,
his anger here was more with the Urquharts than with the Margerisons
and most with Lucy. One is, of course, most angry, with those who have
most power to hurt.

Suddenly feeling rather ill, Peter collapsed into a chair.

Peggy, coming and kneeling by him, half comforting, half reproaching,
said, "Oh, Peter darling, you haven't been refusing money, when you know
you and Tommy and all of us need it so much?"

Hilary said, "Peter has no regard whatever for what we all need. He
simply doesn't care. I suppose now we shall never be able to afford even
a new thermometer to replace the one Peter broke. Again, why should
it matter to Peter? He took his own temperature all through his illness,
and I suppose that is all he cares about. I wonder how much fever I have
at this moment. Is my pulse very wild, Peggy?"

"It is not," said Peggy, soothingly, without feeling it. "And I daresay
Peter's temperature is as high as yours now, if we knew; he looks like
it. Well, Peter, it was stupid of you, my dear, wasn't it, to say no to
a present and hurt their feelings that way when they'd been so good as
to come in the rain and all. If they offer it again--"

Peter said, "They won't. They won't come here again, ever. They've done
with us, I'm glad to say, and we with them. So you needn't write to them
again; it will be no use."

Peter was certainly cross, Peggy and Hilary looked at him in surprised
disapproval. How silly. Where was the use of having friends if one
treated them in this unkind, proud way?

"Peter," said Hilary, "has obviously decided that we are not fit to have
anything to do with his grand friends. No doubt he is well-advised--" he
looked bitterly round the unkempt room--"and we will certainly take the
hint."

Then Peter recovered himself and said, "Oh don't be an ass, Hilary," and
laughed dejectedly, and went up to finish putting Thomas to bed.

In the carriage that rolled through the rain from Brook Street to Park
Lane, Lord Evelyn Urquhart was saying, "This is the last time; the very
last time. Never again do I try to help any Margerison. First I had to
listen for full five minutes to the lies of that woman; then to the
insufferable remarks of that cad, that swindler, Hilary Margerison, who
I firmly believe had an infectious disease which I have no doubt caught,"
(he was r