Her flat breast was stuck with
pins, and pinkish threads revealed the fact that the bathrobe was
still under way.
"Peter!" she cried. "Come in and get warm."
Harmony, in the blue kimono, gave a little gasp, and flung round
her shoulders the mass of pink on which she had been working.
"Please go out!" she said. "I am not dressed."
"You are covered," returned Anna Gates. "That's all that any sort
of clothing can do. Don't mind her, Peter, and sit on the bed.
Look out for pins!"
Peter, however, did not sit down. He stood just inside the closed
door and stared at Harmony--Harmony in the red light from the
little open door of the stove; Harmony in blue and pink and a bit
of white petticoat; Harmony with her hair over her shoulders and
tied out of her eyes with an encircling band of rosy flannel.
"Do sit!" cried Anna Gates. "You fill the room so. Bless you,
Peter, what a collar!"
No man likes to know his collar is soiled, especially on the eve
of proposing marriage to a pink and blue and white vision. Peter,
seated now on the bed, writhed.
"I rapped at Miss Wells's door," he said. "You were not there."
This last, of course, to Harmony.
Anna Gates sniffed.
"Naturally!"
"I had something to say to you. I--I dare say it is hardly
pension etiquette for you to go over to your room and let me say
it there?"
Harmony smiled above the flannel.
"Could you call it through the door?"
"Hardly.
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