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.'
'He said queerer things than that; you know he – ' I began. I saw Pete didn't want to tell about the parrot copying the mysterious child that Mrs. Wylie had spoken of, so I thought I'd tease him a bit by reminding him of it. I felt sure he had got some of his funny ideas out of his fairy stories in his head; that the little girl – for Mrs. Wylie had spoken of a 'her' – was an enchanted princess or something like that, and I wasn't far wrong, as you will see. But I didn't finish my sentence, for Peterkin, who was sitting next me, gave me a sort of little kick, not to hurt, of course, and whispered, 'I'll tell you afterwards.' So I felt it would be ill-natured to tease him, and I didn't say any more, and luckily the others hadn't noticed what I had begun. Blanchie was on her knees in front of the fire toasting for us, and Elf was putting lumps of sugar into the cups, to be ready.
Pete was as hungry as a hunter, and our sharp walk had given Clem and me a fresh appetite, so we ate all the toast and a lot of plum-cake as well, and felt none the worse for it.
And soon after that, it was time to be tidied up to go down to the drawing-room to mamma. Peterkin and Elvira only stayed half-an-hour or so, but after they had gone to bed we three big ones went into the library to finish our lessons while papa and mamma were at dinner. Sometimes we went into the dining-room to dessert, and sometimes we worked on till mamma called us into the drawing-room: it all depended on how many lessons we'd got to do, or how fast we had got on with them. Clement and Blanche were awfully good about that sort of thing, and went at it steadily, much better than I, I'm afraid, though I could learn pretty quickly if I chose. But I did not like lessons, especially the ones we had to do at home, for in these days Clem and I only went to a day-school and had to bring books and things back with us every afternoon. And besides these lessons we had to do at home for school, we had a little extra once or twice a week, as we had French conversation and reading on half-holidays with Blanche's teachers, and they sometimes gave us poetry to learn by heart or to translate. We were not exactly obliged to do it, but of course we didn't want Blanche, who was only a girl, to get ahead of us, as she would very likely have done, for she did grind at her lessons awfully. I think most girls do.
It sounds as if we were rather hard-worked, but I really don't think we were, though I must allow that we worked better in those days, and learnt more in comparison, than we do now at – I won't give the name of the big school we are at. Clement says it is better not – people who write books never do give the real names, he says, and I fancy he's right. It is an
