He still retained a trace of challenge in his tone. But no one challenged. Judy took his arm. "So you came out?" she said softly.
"Like us," said Uncle Felix.
"Of course," Tim added. But it was the Tramp who supplied the significant words they had all been waiting for, Stumper himself more eagerly than any one else. "To look," he remarked quite naturally.
Stumper might have just won a great world-victory, judging by the expression that danced upon his face. He dropped all pretence at further concealment. He put his other arm round Tim's shoulder, partly to balance himself better against Judy's pushing, and partly because he realised the companionship of both children as very dear just then. He had a great deal to say, and wanted to say it all at once, but words never came to him too easily; he had missed many an opportunity in life for the want of fluent and spontaneous address. He stammered and halted somewhat in his delivery. A new language with but a single word in it would have suited him admirably.
"Yes," he growled, "I came out—to look. But when I got out—I clean forgot what it was—who, I mean—no, what," he corrected himself again, "I'd come out to look for. Can't make it out at all." He broke off in a troubled way.
"No?" agreed Judy sympathetically, as though she knew.
"But you want to find it awfully," Tim stated as a fact.
"Awfully," admitted Stumper with a kind of fierceness.
"Only you can't remember what it looks like quite?" put in Uncle Felix.
Stumper hesitated a moment. "Too wonderful to remember properly," he said more quietly; something like that. "But the odd thing is," he went on in a lower tone, "I've seen it. I know I've seen it. Saw it this mornin'—very early—when the pigeon woke me up—at dawn."