“I'm coming to that. Don't you suppose you more than earn everything? Doesn't it humiliate me hourly to see you working here?”
“Peter! Would you rob me of my last vestige of self-respect?”
This being unanswerable, Peter fell back on his major premise.
“If you'll put up with me for a day or so I'll take this list of Anna's and hunt up some body. Just describe the person you desire and I'll find her.” He assumed a certainty he was far from feeling, but it reassured the girl. “A woman, of course?”
Harmony recalled Mrs. Boyer's ample figure and shook her head.
“Not too stout. And agreeable. That's most important.”
“'Agreeable,'” wrote Peter. “Although Anna was hardly agreeable, in the strict sense of the word, was she?”
“'Human!'” wrote Peter. “Wanted, a woman, not young, not too stout, agreeable and human. Shall I advertise?”
The strain was quite gone by that time. Harmony was smiling. Jimmy, waking, called for food, and the morning of the first day was under way.
Peter was well content that morning, in spite of an undercurrent of uneasiness. Before this Anna had shared his proprietorship with him. Now the little household was his. His vicarious domesticity pleased him. He strutted about, taking a new view of his domain; he tightened a doorknob and fastened a noisy window. He inspected the coal-supply and grumbled over its quality. He filled the copper kettle on the stove, carried in the water for Jimmy's morning bath, cleaned the mouse cage. He even insisted on peeling the little German potatoes, until Harmony cried aloud at his wastefulness and took the knife from him.
And afterward, while Harmony in the sickroom read aloud and Jimmy put the wooden sentry into the cage to keep order, he got out his books and tried to study. But he did little work. His book lay on his knee, his pipe died beside him. The strangeness of the situation came over him, sitting there, and left him rather frightened. He tried to see it from the viewpoint of an outsider, and found himself incredulous and doubting. McLean would resent the situation. Even the Portier was a person to reckon with. The skepticism of the American colony was a thing to fear and avoid.
And over all hung the incessant worry about money; he could just manage alone. He could not, by any method he knew of, stretch his resources to cover a separate arrangement for himself. But he had undertaken to shield a girl-woman and a child, and shield them he would and could.