Peterkin

'I didn't say so,' I replied.

'Be quiet, both of you,' said Clem, 'and hurry on,' for we had slackened a little.

But in spite of the breathlessness of the pace, I heard another gasp from Peterkin —

'It is velly like the blue-bird,' were the words I distinguished.

And 'I knew I was right,' I thought to myself triumphantly.

CHAPTER II

FOUND

The carriage was standing waiting at our own house when we got there. And there was some bustle going on, for the front door was not shut, and we could see into the hall, which of course was brightly lighted up.

Papa was there, speaking to some one; he had his hat on, as if he was just coming out again. And – yes – it was Drew he was speaking to, and James too, I think – but behind them was poor mamma, looking so dreadfully unhappy. It did make me want to shake Peterkin again.

They did not see us as quickly as we saw them, for it was dark outside and they were all talking: papa giving directions, I fancy.

So they did jump when Clem – hurrying for once – rushed up the steps, dragging Peterkin after him.

'We've found him – we've found him!' he shouted. 'In with you, Pete: show yourself, quick.'

For mamma had got quite white, and looked as if she were going to faint or tumble down in some kind of a fit; but luckily before she had time for anything, there was that fat boy hugging and squeezing her so tight that she'd have been clever to move at all, though if she had tumbled down he would have made a good buffer.

'Oh, mamma, mamma – oh, mummy,' he said, and by this time he was howling, of course, 'I never meant to flighten you. I never did. I thought I'd been only five minutes, and I thought it was nearly as quick home that way.'

And of course mamma didn't scold him! She hugged him as if he'd been lost for a year, and as if he was the prodigal son and the good brother mixed up together.

But papa looked rather stern, and I was not altogether sorry to see it.

'Where have you been, Peterkin?' he said. And then he glanced up at us two – Clem and me – as Peterkin seemed too busy crying to speak. 'Where has he been?' papa repeated. 'It was very clever of you to find him, I must say.'

And mamma's curiosity began to awaken, now that she had got old Pete safe in her arms again. She looked up with the same question in her face.

'Where – ' she began.

And I couldn't help answering.

'It was all Clem's idea,' I said, for it really was only fair for Clem to get some praise. 'He thought of the parrot.'

'The parrot', mamma repeated, growing more puzzled instead of less.

'Yes,' said Clement. 'The parrot next door to Mrs. Wylie's. Perhaps you don't remember, mamma. It was the day Peterkin and I were out with you – Giles wasn't there – and you went in to Mrs. Wylie's and we waited outside, and the parrot was in a cage on the balcony, and we heard it talk.'

'Yes,' said Peterkin, 'he talked,' as if that was an explanation of everything.

Mamma's face cleared.

'I think I do remember something about it,' she said. 'But I have never heard you mention it since, Peterkin?'

'No,' said Peterkin, getting rather red.

'He has spoken of it a little to me,' said Clement; 'that's how I knew it was in his mind. But Peterkin often doesn't say much about what he's thinking a lot about. It's his way.'

'Yes,' said Peterkin, 'it's my way.'

'And have you been planning all these days to run off to see the parrot again?' asked mamma. I wasn't quite sure if she was vexed or not, but I was; it seemed so queer, queer as Pete often was, for him not to have confided in somebody.

But we were mistaken.

'No, no, truly, mamma,' he said, speaking in a much more determined way now, and shaking his curly head. 'I didn't ever think of it till after I'd got out of the calliage and I saw it was the corner of the big square where the little houses are at one end, and then I only meant to go for one minute. I thought it was nearly as quick that way, and I ran fast. I never meant to flighten you, mamma,' he repeated again, his voice growing plaintive. 'I wasn't planning it a bit all these days. I only kept thinking it were like the blue-bird.'

The last sentence was almost in a whisper; it was only a sort of honesty that forced him to say it. As far as Clement and I were concerned, he needn't have said it.

'I knew he'd got some fairy-story rubbish in his head,' I muttered, but I don't think Peterkin heard me, though papa and mamma did; for I saw them glance at each other, and papa said something under his breath, of which I only caught the words 'getting too fanciful,' and 'schoolboy,' which made mamma look rather unhappy again.

'I don't yet understand how old Mrs. Wylie got mixed up in it all,' said papa.

'She lives next door to the parrot,' said Clem, and we couldn't help smiling at the funny way he said it.

'And she saw me when she was coming back from the post, and she was very kind,' Peterkin went on, taking up the story again, as the smile had encouraged him. 'She 'avited me to go in, up to her drawing-room, so that I could hear him talking better. And he said lots of things.'

'Oh yes, by the bye,' I exclaimed, 'there was something about a little girl, Mrs. Wylie said. What was it, Pete?'

But Peterkin shut up at this.

'I'll tell you the next time I go there. Mummy, you will let me go to see that old lady again, won't you?' he begged. 'She was so kind, and I only thought I'd been there five minutes. Mayn't I go again to see her?'

'And the parrot,' said mamma, smiling. She was sharp enough to take in that it was a quarter for Mrs. Wylie and three quarters for the parrot that he wanted so to go back to Rock Terrace. 'Well, you must promise never to pay visits on your own account again, Peterkin, and then we shall see. Now run upstairs to the nursery as fast as you can and get some tea. And I'm sure Clem and Giles will be glad of some more. I hope poor nurse and Blanche and Elfie know he is all right,' she added, glancing round.

'Yes, ma'am. I took the liberty of going up to tell the young ladies and Mrs. Brough, when Master Peterkin first returned,' said James in his very politest and primmest tone.

'That was very thoughtful of you,' said mamma, approvingly, which made James get very red.

We three boys skurried upstairs after that. At least I did. Clement came more slowly, but as his legs were long enough to take two steps at a time, he got to the top nearly as soon as I did, and Peterkin came puffing after us. I was rather surprised that Blanche and Elf had been content to stay quietly in the nursery, considering all the excitement that had been going on downstairs, and I think it was very good of Blanche, for she told me afterwards that she had only done it to keep Elvira from getting into one of her endless crying fits. They always say Elf is such a nervous child that she can't help it, but I think it's a good bit of it cross temper too.

Still she is rather growing out of it, and, after all, that night there was something to cry about, and there might have been worse, as nurse said. She had been telling the girls stories of people who got lost, though she was sensible enough to make them turn up all right at the end. She can tell very interesting stories sometimes, but she keeps the best ones to amuse us when we are ill, or when mamma's gone away on a visit, or something horrid like that has happened.

They all three flew at Peterkin, of course, and hugged him as if he'd been shipwrecked, or putting out a fire, or something grand like that. And he took it as coolly as anything, and asked for his tea, as if he deserved all the petting and fussing.

That was another of his little 'ways,' I suppose.

Then, as we were waiting for the kettle to boil up again to make fresh tea, if you please, for his lordship – though Clem and I were to have some too, of course, and we did deserve it – all the story had to be told over for the third or fourth time, of the parrot, and old Mrs. Wylie meeting Pete as she came in, and his thinking he'd only been there about five minutes, and all the rest of it.

'And what did the Polly parrot talk about?' asked Elf. She had a picture of a parrot in one of her books, and some rhymes about it.

'Oh,' answered Peterkin,' he said, "How d'ye do?" and "Pretty Poll," and things like that.'