smothering things. They just bored him
dreadfully. He wouldn't ever come and stay with us, you know.... Oh, and
I've written to Felicity, telling her what I meant to do. I don't quite
know what she'll say; nobody ever does know, with Felicity.... Now I'm
going back to the house, Peter, and you and Thomas must go back too. But
first we'll settle what to do, and when to do it."

It didn't take much settling, between three people who saw no
difficulties anywhere, but said simply, "Let us do this," and did it,
as children do. But such plans as they thought desirable they made,
then parted.

"I shall tell Denis," said Lucy, "I must do that. I'll explain to him
all I can, and leave the rest. But not yet. I shall tell him on Sunday
night."

"Yes," Peter agreed, simply, while the shadow fell again momentarily on
his vision. "You must do that, of course...."

He left it at that; for Denis he had no words.

Lucy got up, and laid Thomas in Peter's arms.

"How much I've talked and talked, Peter. I've never talked so much
before, have I? And I s'pose I never will again. But it had to be all
said out once. I'm tired of only thinking things, even though I knew
you understood. Saying things makes them alive. They're alive now, and
always will be. So good-bye."

They stood and looked at one another for a moment in silence, then turned
and took their opposite ways.

Peter didn't go back to London till the late afternoon. He had things to
show Thomas on this his first day in the country. So he took him a long
walk, and Thomas sat in meadows and got a near view of cows and sheep,
and saw Peter paddle in a stream and try to catch minnows in an old tin
pot that he found.

Another thing that he found, or rather that found them, was a
disreputable yellow dog. He was accompanying a tramp and his wife along
the road. When the tramp sat down and untied a handkerchief full of apple
pie and cold potatoes (tramps have delightful things to eat as a rule)
the dog came near and asked for his share, and was violently removed to
a distance by the tramp's boot. He cried and ran through the hedge and
came upon Peter and Thomas, who were sitting on the other side, in a
field. Peter looked over the hedge and said, "Is he yours?" and was told,
"Mine! No, 'e ain't. 'E's been follerin' us for miles, and the more I
kick 'im the more 'e follers. Wish someone'd pison 'im. I'm sick of 'im."
His wife, who had the weary, hopeless, utterly resigned face of