"Look here! Do you want me to go?"

"Go?" He was too surprised to do anything but echo her words.

"Yes." The colour deepened in her cheeks, but her eyes met his without flinching. "I know it's been unpleasant for you, all these weeks," she went on deliberately. "I know you'd much rather be alone with Faith, so if you'll say the word I'll go, and no complaints."

There was a little silence, then Forrester said slowly:

"I suppose it hasn't occurred to you that if you go, Miss Fraser, Faith will probably go too."

"Is that what she says?"

"Yes."

Peg laughed.

"Well, don't take any notice of her. She's a silly kid; she says lots of things she doesn't really mean." She came across the room and stood beside him. "Look here; it's partly me who's to blame for her being so unkind to you," she went on bluntly. "I told her you were Ralph Scammel.

I told her that you were a selfish brute, and that you made us work as we did to get money for you." For the first time her eyes fell, as she added: "You needn't believe me, but I've often been sick about that--since!"

Forrester laughed.

"You need not be. It's more or less true. I am selfish, and I am Ralph Scammel, and I did work you and hundreds of other girls like you, to make money for me."

"You're not a bit selfish," Peg said almost violently. "Look how good you've been to us! Took us from nothing, as you might say----"

"Oh--please!" Forrester stopped her in embarra.s.sment. "I shall think you're going to ask me a favour if you say such kind things," he protested, half in fun.

"Well, then, I'm not," Peg declared. "But I'm going to ask you a question, all the same."

"What is it?"

"If I wasn't here, would you have your own friends to the flat? Oh, you needn't make excuses! I know I'm not so good as Faith! I knew it the first time I ever saw her! I used to tell her that she'd got no right to be at Heeler's. I know she's got something in her that I can't ever have, because her father was a gentleman, I suppose, and mine wasn't. So if you say the word, I'll pack up right away and be off! I can't say fairer than that, can I?"

There was a little silence. Then suddenly Forrester held out his hand.

"You're a brick--a real brick!" he said. "And--and--I shall be grateful to you if you will stay, Miss Fraser."

Peg gripped his hand hard.

"Oh, I'll stay, if you mean it," she said. She spoke rather loudly in order to hide her real emotion, and turning quickly away began to talk hurriedly on some other subject. But later, when Forrester had gone from the room, she darted across to where he had thrown his coat down on a chair, and s.n.a.t.c.hing it up, pressed her lips to it.

"If you cared for me, as you do for her," she said, in a fierce little whisper, and then bitterly: "Oh, she's a fool--a blind little fool!"

CHAPTER IX

The house at Hampstead was ready at the end of August, and Peg moved to it from the flat with Forrester and his wife.

She and Faith were like a couple of children getting the house in order; Peg had not much taste, and she adored bright colours. She would have had a rainbow drawing-room if it had been left for her to decide, but Faith was determined to be mistress in her own house as far as its arrangement went, and on that subject she and her husband were for once agreed.

It was rather a charming house, with a long garden, shut in by a high wall, and the first night they were established there Faith found Peg leaning out of her bedroom window, which overlooked it, her elbows resting on the stone sill, and a look of gloomy despondency in her handsome eyes.

Faith slipped an arm round her.

"What's the matter, Peg?" she asked. She was very fond of Peg and quick to recognize her varying moods. Peg answered gruffly, without her usual cheeriness.

"I'm fed up! I don't belong here! What right have I got to be in a house like this, and sleeping in a room like this?"

She turned round sharply, her blue eyes taking in every detail of the expensively furnished room behind them.

She had chosen its wallpaper herself, which was too bright, and a ma.s.s of extraordinary looking birds. She had chosen the carpet, too, which was a curious mixture of greens and yellows, with a satin quilt on the bed to match.

The furniture was white enamel, and both the big chairs in the room had a brilliant cushion of peac.o.c.k green.

"It looks--uncommon," so Faith had said slowly, when she was first introduced to the finished result, but neither she nor the Beggar Man really liked it, as Peg had been quick to perceive.

"At any rate, I've got to sleep in it, and n.o.body else," she said in defiance.

"And she ought to have nightmare every night," so Forrester remarked afterwards rather grimly to his wife. "Good gracious, what taste! It shouts at one!"

Faith had defended Peg then, but she knew he was right, and she understood quite well now what Peg meant when she said she knew that she did not belong to the house.

"But it's all nonsense," she declared warmly. "I love you. I should hate the house without you."

Peg stooped and kissed her gratefully.

"You're a nice little kid," she said with a sigh. "But--it's true all the same what I say. I don't belong. If I wasn't here you'd be living quite a different life, you and Mr. Forrester. He'd be asking his friends to the house, and you'd be giving dinner-parties. But you don't because I'm here, and he's afraid I shall shock them."

"As if it matters what he's afraid of," Faith said sharply, but in her heart she knew that Peg was right; knew that, no matter how good and warm-hearted she might be, Peg grated on the Beggar Man forty times a day.

Over and over again Faith had seen him frown and turn away at one of Peg's slangy terms, just as she had seen him frown that day when she had told him that the facts of her marriage were like a novelette, and she had subst.i.tuted "fairy story" instead.

Odd that then she had been so willing and anxious to please him, and that now she never considered him at all.

Peg seemed to guess something of her thoughts, for she caught her by the arm, twisting her round so that they were face to face.

"Look here," she said. "How long's it going on like this?"

The bright colour rushed to Faith's cheeks.

"What do you mean?"

"You know quite well what I mean," Peg said bluntly. "I mean how long is that husband of yours going to go on calmly paying out for you and me to live here, and have everything we want in the world, and get nothing in return? He's soft to do it, that's what I think. Either soft or an angel," she added. "And, after all, that's pretty much the same thing, isn't it?"

Faith laughed nervously.

"You do say such queer things," she objected.