His aunts were lost in admiration for their nephew's firmness.

Peter had inherited somewhat of his father's dictatorial manner, and their flattery did not tend to soften it.

When his aged relatives mispronounced the magic word _kopje_, or betrayed their belief that a _donga_ was an inaccessible mountain--he brought the big guns of his heavy satire to bear on the little target of their ignorance without remorse.

He mistook a loud voice, and a habit of laying down the law, for manly decision, and the gift of leadership; and imagined that in talking down his mother's gentle protests he had convinced her of his superior wisdom.
When he had made it sufficiently clear, however, that he did not wish Lady Mary to accompany him to town, young Sir Peter made haste to depart thither himself, on the very reasonable plea that he required a new outfit of clothes.
Was it possible that his departure brought a dreadful relief to the mother who had prayed day and night, for eight-and-twenty months, that her son might return to her?
She tried and tried, on her knees in her own room, to realize what her feelings would have been if Peter had been killed in South Africa.
She tried to recall the first ecstasy of joy at his home-coming.

She remembered, as she might have remembered a dream, the hours of agony she had passed, looking out over these very blue hills, and dumbly beseeching God to spare her boy--her only son--out of all the mothers' sons who were laying down their lives for England.
A terrible thought assailed her now and then, like an ugly spectre that would not be laid--that if Peter had died of his wound--if he had fallen as so many of his comrades had fallen, in the war--he would have been a hero for all time; a glorious memory, safely enshrined and enthroned above all these miserable petty doubts and disappointments.
She cast the thought from her in horror and piteous grief, and reiterated always her passionate gratitude for his preservation.