“Yes, that’s us.”
“Well, bless my stars, it’s _his_ bill-case I have been crying all morning. If I’d known there was a fine lad like you sitting about doing nothing, I’d had you with me, ringing the bell.”
The little fellow’s face glowed. He was as quick to recognize a friend worth having as Captain Kidd had been.
“Say,” he began, “if it was Daddy’s bill-case you were shouting about, you needn’t do it any longer. It’s found. Captain Kidd came in with it in his mouth just after Daddy went away. He was starting to dig a hole in the sand down by the garage to bury it in, like he does everything. He’s hardly done being a puppy yet, you know. I took it away from him and reckanized it, and I’ve been waiting here all morning for Dad to come home.”
He began tugging at the pocket into which he had stowed the bill-case for safe-keeping, and Captain Kidd, feeling that it was his by right of discovery, stood up, wagging himself all over, and poking his nose in between them, with an air of excited interest. The Towncrier shook his finger at him.
“You rascal! I suppose you’ll be claiming the reward next thing, you old pirate! How old is he, Richard?”
“About a year. He was given to me when he was just a little puppy.”
“And how old are you, son?”
“Ten my last birthday, but I’m so big for my age I wear ’leven-year-old suits.”
Now the Towncrier hadn’t intended to stop, but the dog began burrowing its head ecstatically against him, and there was something in the boy’s lonesome, dirty little face which appealed to him, and the next thing he knew he was sitting on the bottom step of the Green Stairs with Georgina beside him, telling the most thrilling pirate story he knew. And he told it more thrillingly than he had ever told it before. The reason for this was he had never had such a spellbound listener before. Not even Justin had hung on each word with the rapt interest this boy showed. His dark eyes seemed to grow bigger and more luminous with each sentence, more intense in their piercing gaze. His sensitive mouth changed expression with every phase of the adventure--danger, suspense, triumph. He scarcely breathed, he was listening so hard.