and here it is necessary to introduce another character to the reader, one of whom there has already been a momentary glimpse, but who now comes forward to play his speaking part. he is indeed a small character, a young character, and might, at first appearance, seem insignificant, yet the part he has to play in peter’s drama is fraught with much consequence. a very small pebble dropped into a pool can send out wide circles, so this small figure dropped into peter’s life was to play a far-reaching and important part.
the little figure first made its appearance by peeping through the hedge in front of peter’s cottage. it was a boy-child, aged perhaps some seven summers, and was clad in short blue serge knickerbockers and a blue jersey.
peter himself was sitting by the door piping. the small figure thought his presence unobserved, but peter’s blue eyes were watching him keenly. he sat very still as he piped, and the music was calling the child to him.
it was a friendly, seductive little tune that he was playing, and peter saw the child move towards the gate. he did not look at him now, fearing by the slightest sign or movement to startle him. suddenly peter felt a light touch on his knee, gentle as the touch of a small bird’s wing. the child had stolen up the path and was beside him.
peter’s heart leapt with pleasure. it was as if he had drawn a little wild woodland creature near him. he still did not move, but he let the music die away.
“i like that,” said the small boy, gazing at him with solemn eyes, “and i like you.”
peter’s eyes wrinkled at the comers in sheer delight. it was a good many years since a child’s voice had spoken to him, since a child’s hand had been laid upon his knee.
“oh,” said peter, smiling with pretended laziness, “do you? well, i fancy the appreciation is reciprocated. what’s your name?”
“dickie gordon,” responded the small boy. “i’m staying with my aunt and lady anne at the white house. i like lady anne.”
peter laughed. “your judgment and intuition are faultless, my son. the lady anne is the divinest woman the good lord ever created.”
“then you like her too?” queried dickie.
“i might go farther than that,” said peter reflectively; “adoration, worship, might be nearer my sentiments. but how, may i ask, did you find your way down here?”
dickie smiled, an elfin smile of pure wickedness.
“i ran away from nurse. she’s got the baby in the perambulator. it’s a very young baby, and perambulators are dull things—they can’t get over stiles, or go across fields or even the tiniest kind of streams, not even streams with a plank across: the wheels are always too wide. and nurse doesn’t understand anything, not why fields are nicer than roads, and why it’s pleasant to stand still in a wood and listen, and why some walks are nice ways and some walks dull and horrid. she thinks everything’s just all the same. and i can’t explain things to her, things i know in my inside. so i just ran away and came to see you.”
“you did, did you?” responded peter. and back his mind swung to the memory of another small boy, one of whom the lady anne had written to him, and of another non-understanding grown-up. oh, those olympians who, from their heights of common sense, cannot stoop to the level of childhood!—for stooping they assuredly would term it, though peter took another view of the respective levels. yet, whatever the levels, the fact undoubtedly remained the same: their utter and entire incapacity of seeing eye to eye, of hearing ear to ear, of feeling heart to heart with a child. and, mused peter, it was unquestionable whose was the greater loss. and then he roused himself.
“but how about my duty?” he demanded. “oughtn’t i to bind you, fetter you, and carry you back a prisoner to that perambulator, that very young baby, and that non-comprehending nurse?”
dickie looked at him.
“you won’t,” he said comfortably; “besides, i want to talk.”
“humph!” said peter, again smiling lazily; “well, talk. i shall doubtless make a good audience, since the hearing of speech is now something of a novelty to me.”
dickie looked at him again. the speech was not entirely clear, but the encouragement to talk was.
with a deep breath he began: “nurse says this cottage is a bad place, and you’re friends with the devil. is he really an unpleasant person? you don’t look’s if you’d be friends with him if he were.”
“hmm,” said peter, dubious, his eyes nevertheless twinkling; “i cannot say that i have honestly a very close acquaintanceship with him—at least, i hope not. but i have never fancied him a pleasant person. he has”—peter sought wildly in his mind for the best reason for the averred unpleasantness—“so little idea of playing the game.”
“yes?” it was dickie’s turn to be dubious now.
“oh,” thought peter distractedly, “i have not only to make statements, but i have to substantiate them!” aloud he spoke, firmly, and with an air of conviction: “he does not play the game, because he pretends to be friendly when he isn’t, [pg 188]and he tells us things are nice when they aren’t.” this, at all events, was good and orthodox teaching. peter patted himself on the back, so to speak.
“like the apple what adam and eve ate,” said dickie solemnly; “they thought it was going to taste so nice, and make them very wise, but it was a sour apple, and they had to go away out of the garden ’cause they ate it.”
“exactly!” said peter, much relieved that dickie should be taking the initiative as chronicler of biblical events, feeling, be it stated, somewhat hazy on these subjects himself.
there was a pause. then, with a deep sigh, dickie spoke again.
“i wish i knew things.”
“what things?” asked peter, amused.
“lots of things,” said dickie. there was a world of unconscious yearning in the child’s voice. “i want to know lots of things. what made god think the world? did he think me from the beginning, ’cause he knew everything? why did he wait till now to make me? i’d so lots sooner have been a viking. why doesn’t he let us choose what we are to be? why are some days nice and other days horrid, though everything looks just ’xactly the same and just as sunny? why don’t i know the whys of things?”
“oh!” said peter with a long-drawn breath, and a silence fell, while suddenly, and perhaps for almost the first time in his life, peter faced the great eternal question—the everlasting why of the universe. and because he had no answer to give, because he had not as yet the faintest inkling of the answer, he was silent, though, all unconsciously, the child had put before him the problem his soul was inarticulately striving to solve.
“why?” said dickie again, gazing at him. and then peter replied.
“you had better ask lady anne,” he responded, basely shifting the responsibility. yet though he half acknowledged the baseness, he knew confidently that she must be better able to deal with the question than he, for surely she, enshrined where she was in his thoughts, would have some knowledge, some answer to give, something to which he might listen with as great confidence as the child beside him would listen.
and then suddenly down the lane came a shrill voice, causing dickie to start and peter to look up quickly.
“master dickie, master dickie!” the tones were unquestionably somewhat strident.
“that’s nurse,” whispered dickie.
“so i concluded,” said peter dryly. “what’s to be done?”
“s’pose i must go,” announced dickie ruefully.
“master dickie!” the voice was close now, and the next moment a heated woman in nurse’s garb and wheeling a perambulator came into view.
peter got up and went down to the gate, holding dickie’s small brown hand close in his big one.
“i believe,” said peter courteously, “that you are looking for master dickie; here he is.”
the woman paused, flabbergasted. “with you!” she ejaculated.
“with me,” said peter, smiling. “and after all he has heard about me,” he continued seriously, “it’s a wonder that he ventured near this cottage.”
the nurse looked at peter. there was something in his manner that checked the outburst of indignation that was perilously near the surface.
“i’ve been that worried!” she said, and she stopped to wipe her face with a large white handkerchief.
peter appreciated her concern. it is unquestionably trying to lose a small boy entrusted to your care, especially on an exceedingly warm summer day, and have no notion what has become of him. peter felt a bit of a culprit.
“i’m very sorry you’ve been bothered,” he said contritely. “he—” and peter paused; he could not give dickie away.
“i came to see him,” announced dickie calmly, “because i wanted to find out what he was like. now if you want me i’ll come home. good-bye, mr. piper.” he held out his hand, which peter shook gravely.
“you’re a bad boy,” said the nurse, virtuous indignation in her voice.
dickie scorned a reply.
“he really hasn’t come to any harm,” said peter apologetically.
“that’s as may be,” said the nurse with majestic significance, divided between her previous conception of peter and the now very obvious fact that he was of gentle birth; “that’s as may be. but his aunt won’t care to hear of his goings-on, nor my lady either, for that matter.”
“lady anne will understand,” protested dickie, voicing peter’s own opinion.
“she may and she mayn’t,” was the tart reply. “now you’ll please to come home; we’re half an hour late as it is.”
“i said i was ready before,” remarked dickie calmly.
the nurse jerked the perambulator round in a manner that caused the very young baby within to open its eyes in a kind of mild protest.
“i’ll come and see you again,” said dickie confidently to peter.
the nurse pulled him by the arm. “you’ll do nothing of the kind, master dickie.”
“huh!” said dickie, “you don’t know. i shall ask lady anne.”
and then the three disappeared down the lane.
“the lady anne,” remarked peter to himself, “is evidently a divinity to another and much smaller person than i. i don’t exactly love that nurse,” he continued reflectively, “but i fancy she has her hands full.”
and whistling airily, peter passed up the little path to the cottage.
