"The child from the hospital. Please to make haste."
Jimmy died an hour after midnight, quite peacefully, died with
one hand in Harmony's and one between Peter's two big ones.
Toward the last he called Peter "Daddy" and asked for a drink.
His eyes, moving slowly round the room, passed without notice the
grayfaced woman in a gold dress who stood staring down at him,
rested a moment on the cage of mice, came to a stop in the
doorway, where stood the sentry, white and weary, but refusing
rest.
It was Harmony who divined the child's unspoken wish.
"The manual?" she whispered.
The boy nodded. And so just inside the door of the bedroom across
from the old salon of Maria Theresa the sentry, with sad eyes but
no lack of vigor, went again through the Austrian manual of arms,
and because he had no carbine he used Peter's old walking-stick.
When it was finished the boy smiled faintly, tried to salute, lay
still.
CHAPTER XXVII
Peter was going back to America and still he had not told Harmony
he loved her. It was necessary that he go back. His money had
about given out, and there was no way to get more save by earning
it. The drain of Jimmy's illness, the inevitable expense of the
small grave and the tiny stone Peter had insisted on buying, had
made retreat his only course. True, Le Grande had wished to
defray all expenses, but Peter was inexorable. No money earned as
the dancer earned hers should purchase peaceful rest for the
loved little body.
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