After luncheon Philip, calling downstairs through a cloud of steam that he was going out to the post, took up the letters and his cap and ran out of the house, down the short gravel-sweep, and up the road.
Twenty minutes later he might have been observed diligently scouring Hampstead Heath in search of a blue cotton frock and a _cérise_ leather belt.
"Hallo, Phil!" remarked Miss Falconer, hastily crumpling up her handkerchief into a moist ball and stuffing it into her pocket. Her back had been turned, and she had not noticed his approach.
Philip climbed up on the gate beside her.
"Tell me what you have been doing since I saw you last," commanded Peggy briskly.
"I have been helping Uncle Joseph," said Philip, rather reluctantly. He was not anxious to be drawn into details upon this topic.
"Uncle Joseph?" The little girl nodded her head with an air of great wisdom. "I have been talking to Mother about him."
"I told her what you told me, about his not liking women; and I asked her why she thought it was."
"What did she say?" enquired Philip, much interested. Of late he had been giving this point a good deal of consideration himself.
"She said," replied Peggy, evidently quoting _verbatim_ and with great care, "that there was probably only one woman in the world who could give an answer to that question--and she never would!"
"What does that mean?" enquired the obtuse Philip.
"It means," explained Peggy, adopting the superior attitude inevitable in the female, however youthful, who sets out to unfold the mysteries of the heart to a member of the unintelligent sex, "that Uncle Joseph was once fond of a lady, and she threw him over."
"But I don't think that can be true," said Philip deferentially. "Uncle Joseph isn't fond of any ladies at all. You have only to hear him talk about them to know that. He thinks they are an incu--incu--something. Anyhow, it means a heavy burden. They are Parry-sites, too. He says the only way to do one's work in life is to keep away from women. How could he be fond of one?"
"I expect he didn't always think all those things about them," replied Peggy shrewdly. "Men change with disappointment," she added, with an air of profound wisdom.
"How do you know that?" enquired Philip respectfully. Such matters were too high for him.