Don't worry."
The lunch was a silent meal. Anna was hurrying off as Peter came
in, and there was no time to discuss Peter's new complication
with her. Harmony and Peter ate together, Harmony rather silent.
Anna's unfortunate comment about Peter had made her constrained.
After the meal Peter, pipe in mouth, carried the dishes to the
kitchen, and there it was that he gave her the letter. What
Peter's slower mind had been a perceptible time in grasping
Harmony comprehended at once--and not only the situation, but
its solution.
"Don't let her have him!" she said, putting down the letter.
"Bring him here. Oh, Peter, how good we must be to him!"
And that after all was how the thing was settled. So simple, so
obvious was it that these three expatriates, these waifs and
estrays, banded together against a common poverty, a common
loneliness, should share without question whatever was theirs to
divide. Peter and Anna gave cheerfully of their substance,
Harmony of her labor, that a small boy should be saved a tragic
knowledge until he was well enough to bear it, or until, if God
so willed, he might learn it himself without pain.
The friendly sentry on duty again that night proved singularly
blind. Thus it happened that, although the night was clear when
the twin dials of the Votivkirche showed nine o'clock, he did not
notice a cab that halted across the street from the hospital.
Still more strange that, although Peter passed within a dozen
feet of him, carrying a wriggling and excited figure wrapped in a
blanket and insisting on uncovering its feet, the sentry was able
the next day to say that he had observed such a person carrying a
bundle, but that it was a short stocky person, quite lame, and
that the bundle was undoubtedly clothing going to the laundry.
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