"Very well, if you like it, I'll marry--I mean, I'll take it. Tell me
how you hurt your hands."
"There's nothing to tell," she put him off again, visibly freezing--an
intellectual feat in such weather. "And--really, as I said before, I
don't care to talk about myself."
Her look, even more than her words, shut Peter up. The cloak saved the
situation during a few frigid seconds. But as a situation it had
become strained. The only hope for the future was to go now. And Peter
went. He went straight back to Sea Gull Manor and to his father.
CHAPTER XXVI
WHEN THE SECRET CAME OUT
Father was in the library when Peter got home. One did not open the
door and walk straight into this sacred room. One knocked, and if
father happened to be engaged in any pursuit which he did not wish the
family eye to see, he had time to smuggle it away and take up a
newspaper, or even a book, before calling out "Come in."
To-day, not being well, he was allowing himself the luxury of a
jig-saw puzzle, but as he considered the amusement frivolous for a man
of his position, at the sound of his son's voice he hustled the board
containing the half-finished picture into a drawer of his roll-top
desk.
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