“Look at the two pairs of legs,” said Majendie.

Anne sighed.  Her Peggy showed very white and frail beside the red, lusty-legged daughter of the woods.

“I’m not at all happy about her,” said she.

“Why not?”

“She gets so terribly tired.”

“All children do, don’t they?”

Anne shook her head.  “Not as she does.  It isn’t a child’s healthy tiredness.  It doesn’t come like that.  It came on quite suddenly the other day, after she’d been excited; and her little lips turned grey.”

“Get Gardner to look at her.”

“I’m going to.  He says she ought to be more in the open air.  I wish we could get a cottage somewhere in the country, with a nice garden.”

Majendie said nothing.  He was thinking of Three Elms Farm, and the garden and the orchard, and of the pure wind that blew over them straight from the sea.  He remembered how Maggie had said that the child would love it.

“You could afford it, Walter, couldn’t you, now?”

“Of course I can afford it.”

He thought how easily it could be done, if he gave up his yacht and the farm.  His business was doing better every year.  But the double household was a drain on his fresh resources.  He could not very well afford to take another house, and keep the farm too.  He had thought of that before.  He had been thinking of it last night when he spoke to Maggie about giving him up.  Poor Maggie!  Well, he would have to manage somehow.  If the worst came to the worst they could sell the house in Prior Street.  And he would sell the yacht.

“I think I shall sell the yacht,” he said.

“Oh no, you mustn’t do that.  You’ve been so well since you’ve had it.”

“No, it isn’t necessary.  I shall be better if I take more exercise.”

Peggy came back and the subject dropped.

Peggy was very unhappy before the picnic ended.  She was tired, so tired that she cried piteously, and Majendie had to take her up in his arms and carry her all the way to the station.  Anne carried the doll.

In the train Peggy fell asleep in her father’s arms.  She slept with her face pressed close against him, and one hand clinging to his breast.  Her head rested on his arm, and her hair curled over his rough coat-sleeve.

“Look—­” he whispered.

Anne looked.  “The little lamb—­” she said.

Then she was silent, discerning in the man’s face, bent over the sleeping child, the divine look of love and tenderness.  She was silent, held by an old enchantment and an older vision; brooding on things dear and secret and long-forgotten.

CHAPTER XXX

Though Thurston Square saw little of Mrs. Majendie, the glory of Mrs. Eliott’s Thursdays remained undiminished.  The same little procession filed through her drawing-room as before.  Mrs. Pooley, Miss Proctor, the Gardners, and Canon Wharton.  Mrs. Eliott was more than ever haggard and pursuing; she had more than ever the air of clinging, desperate and exhausted, on her precipitous intellectual heights.