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Updated: June 6, 2025
"Peter! your arm!" screamed Lady Belstone and she fell back almost fainting upon the sofa. Peter stood full in the light now, and they saw that he had lost his right arm. The empty sleeve was pinned to his breast. His aunt tottered towards him. "My poor boy!" she sobbed. "Oh, that's all right," said Peter, in rather annoyed tones. "I can use my left hand perfectly well. I hardly notice it now."
Lady Belstone, besides her widowed dignity, had the advantage of her sister in appearance, mainly because she permitted art, in some degree, to repair the ravages of time. A stiff toupet of white curls crowned the withered brow, below a widow's cap; and, when she smiled, which was not very often, a double row of pearls was not unpleasantly displayed.
The old ladies sat motionless, trembling with the shock; but the canon seized the hand which Peter held out, and, scarcely noticing that it was his left hand, shook it almost madly in both his own. "Peter! good heavens, Peter!" he cried, and the tears ran unheeded down his plump, rosy cheeks. "Peter, my boy, God bless you! Welcome home a thousand thousand times!" "Peter!" gasped Lady Belstone.
"They do, indeed," said Lady Belstone, emphatically; "when they can sing and play all the day and half the night, like our dear Mary and young John." "You see the piano blocking up the hall, though Sir Timothy hated music?" said Miss Crewys. Her own mourning was thoughtfully graduated to indicate the time which had elapsed since Sir Timothy's decease.
"My belief is," said Lady Belstone, "that Peter will just insist on all this wooden rubbish trotting back to the attics, where my dear granny, not being accustomed to wooden furniture, very properly hid it away. If you will believe me, canon, that dresser was brought up from the kitchen, and every single pot and pan that decorates it used to be kept in the housekeeper's room.
"You will give John a wrong impression of our worthy neighbours, Mary," said Sir Timothy, pompously. "Personally, I am always glad to see them." "But you don't have to return their calls, Timothy," said Lady Mary. The canon inadvertently laughed. Sir Timothy looked annoyed. Miss Crewys whispered to Lady Belstone, unheard save by the doctor
"I saw her whispering away to him. A man she never set eyes on before." "Pray are we not to hear the contents?" said Lady Belstone, quivering with indignation. "I suppose he thinks Lady Mary should make the communication herself to Sir Timothy," gasped the canon. "I am sure I have no desire to fulfil so unpleasing a task. Still, the matter was entrusted to me.
"She leapt in a single hour out of a black dress into a white one." "Her anguish when our poor Timothy succumbed to that fatal operation surpassed even the bounds of decorum," said Lady Belstone, "and yet she would not wear a cap!" She appealed to the canon with such a pathetic expression in her small, red-rimmed, grey eyes that he could not answer lightly.
"John has persuaded her, if persuasion was needed, which I take leave to doubt, that there is nothing improper in visiting such places. My dear brother thought otherwise." "You know I do not share your opinions on that point," said the canon. "Though not much of a theatre-goer myself, still " "A widow at the theatre!" said Lady Belstone. "Even in the admiral's lifetime I did not go.
"No doubt," said John, gently. Then she allowed him to examine the rest of the cabinet, whilst she talked on, always of Peter his horsemanship and his shooting and his prowess in every kind of sport and game. Meanwhile, Lady Belstone was holding a hurried consultation with her sister.
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