"
All this was said in a hurried frightened whisper. The poor lady shook
from head to foot and the little bracelets on her trembling wrists jangled
together.
"Then I shall be all alone here," Peter said suddenly, staring at the
candle that was guttering in the breeze that came from behind the heavy
blinds.
"Oh, dear," said his aunt, "I'm sure Uncle Jeremy will be kind if you have
to leave here, you know."
"Why should I have to leave here?" asked Peter.
His aunt sunk her voice very low indeed--so low that it seemed to come from
the heart of the cactus plant by the window.
"He hasn't got your mother now, you know. He'll want to have somebody...."
But she said nothing more--only gazed at the old man opposite her with
staring eyes, and cried in a little desolate whimper and jangled her
bracelets until at last Peter crept softly, miserably to bed.
II
The day of the funeral was a day of high wind and a furious sea. The
Westcotts lived in the parish of the strange wild clergyman whose church
looked over the sea; strange and wild in the eyes of Treliss because he was
a giant in size and had a long flowing beard, because he kept a perfect
menagerie of animals in his little house by the church, and because he
talked in such an odd wild way about God being in the sea and the earth
rather than in the hearts of the Treliss citizens--all these things odd
enough and sometimes, early in the morning, he might be seen, mother-naked,
going down the path to the sea to bathe, which was hardly decent
considering his great size and the immediate neighbourhood of the high
road.
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