"It isn't a bit like me, is it ?" "It is like you, I think, to have a warm heart," said Lady Mary, "though you don't show it to every one; and, after all, you and Peter are old friends--playmates all your lives." "It's been like a lump of lead on my heart all these months and years," said Sarah, "to think how I scoffed at Peter in the Christmas holidays before he went to the war, because my brothers had gone, whilst he stayed at home.

Perhaps that was the reason he went.

I used to lie awake at night sometimes, thinking that if Peter were killed it would be all my fault.

And now his arm has gone--and Tom and Willie came back safely long ago." She cried afresh.
"It may not have been that at all," said Lady Mary, consolingly.

"I don't think Peter was a boy to take much notice of what a goose of a little girl said.