his mother, and they were
passing through Castoleto on the way back from their afternoon's drive.

"It's lungs, you know. They don't give me much chance--the doctors, I
mean. It's warm and sheltered on this coast, so I have to be here. I'd
rather be here, I suppose, than doing a beef-and-snow cure in one of
those ghastly places. But it's a bore hanging round and doing nothing.
I'd as soon it ended straight off."

Ashamed of having been so communicative (but Peter was used to people
being unreserved with him, and never thought it odd), he changed the
subject.

"Are you on the tramp, or what? Is it comfortable?"

"Very," said Peter, "and interesting."

"_Is_ it interesting? How long are you going on with it? When are you
going home?"

"Oh, this is as much home as anywhere else, you know. I don't see any
reason for leaving it yet. We all like it. I've no money, you see, and
life is cheap here, and warm and nice."

"Cheap and warm and nice...." Ashe repeated it, vaguely surprised. He
hadn't realised that Peter was one of the permanently destitute, and
tramping not from pleasure but from necessity.

"What do you _do_?" he asked curiously, seeing that Peter was not at all
embarrassed.

"Oh, nothing very much. A little needlework, which I sell as I go along.
And various sorts of peddling, sometimes. I'm going up to the hotel this
evening, to try and make the people there buy things from me. And we just
play about, you know, and enjoy the roads and the towns and the fairs and
the seashore. It's all fun."

Ashe laughed and made himself cough.

"You awfully queer person! You really like it, living like that?... But
even I don't like it, you know, living shut away from life in this
corner, though I've money enough to be comfortable with. Should I like
it, your life, I wonder? You're not bored, it seems. I always am. What
is it you like so much?"

Peter said, lots of things. No, he wasn't bored; things were too amusing
for that.

They couldn't get any further, because Ashe's mother called him from the
carriage in the road. She too looked tired, and had sad eyes.

Peter looked after them with compassion. They were wasting their little
time together terribly, being sad when they should have found, in these
last few months or years of life, quiet fun on the warm shore where they
had come to make loss less bitter.

Tea being over, he went paddling, with Thomas laughing on his shoulder,
till it was Thomas's bedtime.