He passed into a fresh corps of newly raised Yeomanry, and went through the Winter Campaign of 1901, from April to September, without a scratch.

His mother implored him to come home; but Peter's letters were contemptuous of danger.

If he were to be shot, plenty of better fellows than he had been done for, he wrote; and coming home to go to Oxford, or whatever his guardian might be pleased to order him to do, was not at all in his line, when he was really wanted elsewhere.
To do him justice, he had no idea how boastfully his letters read; he had not the art of expressing himself on paper, and he was always in a hurry.

The moments when he was moved by a vague affection for his home, or his mother, were seldom the actual moments which he devoted to correspondence; and the passing ideas of the moment were all Peter knew how to convey.
Lady Mary could not but be aware of her son's complete independence of her, but the realization of it no longer filled her with such dismay as formerly.

Her outlook upon life was widening insensibly.