This he labeled
"Household Expenses" and set it up on his table, leaning against
his collar-box. There was no sign of Harmony about. The salon was
dark except for the study lamp turned down.
Peter was restless. He put on his shabby dressing-gown and worn
slippers and wandered about. The Portier had brought coal to the
landing; Peter carried it in. He inspected the medicine bottles
on Jimmy's stand and wrote full directions for every emergency he
could imagine. Then, finding it still only nine o'clock, he
turned up the lamp in the salon and wrote an exciting letter from
Jimmy's father, in which a lost lamb, wandering on the
mountain-side, had been picked up by an avalanche and carried
down into the fold and the arms of the shepherd. And because he
stood so in loco parentis, and because it seemed so inevitable
that before long Jimmy would be in the arms of the Shepherd, and,
of course, because it had been a trying day all through, Peter's
lips were none too steady as he folded up the letter.
The fire was dead in the stove; Peter put out the salon lamp and
closed the shutters. In the warm darkness he put out his hand to
feel his way through the room. It touched a little sweater coat
of Harmony's, hanging over the back of a chair. Peter picked it
up in a very passion of tenderness and held it to him.
"Little girl!" he choked. "My little girl! God help me!"
He was rather ashamed, considerably startled.
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