Many
and bitter were the battles she and Peter fought at night over
his treatment, frightful the litter of authorities Harmony put
straight every morning.
The extra expense was not much, but it told. Peter's carefully
calculated expenditures felt the strain. He gave up a course in
X-ray on which he had set his heart and cut off his hour in the
coffee-house as a luxury. There was no hardship about the latter
renunciation. Life for Peter was spelling itself very much in
terms of Harmony and Jimmy those days. He resented anything that
took him from them.
There were anxieties of a different sort also. Anna's father was
failing. He had written her a feeble, half-senile appeal to let
bygones be bygones and come back to see him before he died. Anna
was Peter's great prop. What would he do should she decide to go
home? He had built his house on the sand, indeed.
So far the threatened danger of a mother to Jimmy had not
materialized. Peter was puzzled, but satisfied. He still wrote
letters of marvelous adventure; Jimmy still watched for them,
listened breathless, treasured them under his pillow. But he
spoke less of his father. The open page of his childish mind was
being written over with new impressions. "Dad" was already a
memory; Peter and Harmony and Anna were realities. Sometimes he
called Peter "Dad." At those times Peter caught the boy to him in
an agony of tenderness.
And as the little apartment revolved round Jimmy, so was this
Christmas-Eve given up to him.
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