There is still a pendant to this part of my tale. In May, Peter informed me that he had rented a house on Long Island, a small cottage near Great Neck, with a big fire-place and furniture that would do. He took me out with him the first night. He had engaged a man and his wife, Negroes, to care for the place and cook. We enjoyed a very good dinner and he seemed to have settled down for the summer but in the morning, at breakfast, I, and the Negroes, learned that he was dissatisfied.
I don't like the place much, he explained, at least, I don't think I do. At least, I'm not going to stay here.
He paid the servants two weeks wages and dismissed them. Then he telephoned an expressman to call for his trunks, none of which had been opened. Carrying the bags, two of which contained cats, we caught the 9 o'clock train back to town.
Before this last fluctuation, some time in April, I think it was, Peter's father really did die. Peter did not go to Toledo for the funeral but, after it was over, Mrs. Whiffle came to New York and I met her one day at tea. There was no change in Peter; certainly not a band of black on his arm.
He did seem to have one fixed idea that spring, an idea that centred on marriage.
I'm not particularly in love with any one, he admitted, and so it is rather difficult to choose, but I want children and my children must have a mother. There is Mahalah Wiggins . . . and there is the
