Pip pretended to be getting up, and Bets fled. If only the others would come back! She and Pip were getting tired of one another.
Bets hadn't long to wait before the others came back. In two days' time Larry, Daisy, Fatty, and Buster all turned up together, looking so brown that Pip and Bets had to gaze earnestly at them to make sure they really were their friends. Buster wasn't brown, of course—he was still jet-black, and he flung himself on Pip and Bets in joy and delight, barking and licking and whining as if he had gone mad.
"Buster, darling! You're fatter! Oh, Larry, I'm glad you're back! Daisy, you're terribly brown. And oh, Fatty—you've grown!"
Fatty certainly had grown in the last four months. He was still plump, but he was taller, taller even than Larry now, and much taller than Pip, who didn't seem to have grown at all in the last year.
"Hallo, every one!" he said, and Bets gave a cry of surprise.
"Fatty! You've got a different voice! It's a grown-up voice! Are you putting it on—disguising it, I mean?"
"No," said Fatty, pulling Bets' hair teasingly. "It's just broken, that's all."
"Who broke it?" said Bets, in alarm, and the others roared at her till their sides ached.
"She'll never be anything but a baby!" said Pip. "Never."
Bets looked so upset and puzzled that Fatty put his arm round her and gave her a squeeze. "Bets, don't be silly. You know that when they grow up, boys get deep voices like men's, don't you? Well, when boys' voices change Eke that we say that their voices break—that's an. We don't mean broken in half, or smashed to pieces!"