"How did I happen to trip and fall in there," the boy wondered as he hurried along.
The worst part of it was being helped out by Lawrence, and Lawrence had laughed too, laughed harder than anybody when Peter was safe on the ground, looking like a drowned rat.
"Foolish Peter," repeated the voice. "You might have made all those children love you, then nobody would have laughed at your troubles."
He hurried along, past the market wagons, and a horse accidentally hit him, turning his head. Peter drew back his foot to kick the horse, as he did Pat; and suddenly he received a kick in his own leg, so severe that it made him jump. He was sure, too, that he heard the horse say: "Foolish Peter," as he shook his head.
The boy hurried the faster, too blind with anger and with the water still dripping from his hair, to care where he was going. He saw that Pat was following on. There was one good thing about Pat. He couldn't laugh, and he couldn't talk and lecture him.
"Where was that Lily-bud, following him and nagging him?" He looked all about, but nothing was to be seen except the country road. His leg ached from the kick he had meant to give the horse, and his clothes stuck to him.
Ahead of him he now saw a huge, coarse bramble bush growing by the side of the road. Peter regarded it eagerly and looked about to see if he had lost the wand in the pond. No, there it was. It had fallen into a side-pocket and was glittering there.
Some one had fired a stone at him, he had tripped and fallen into the horse pond, and somebody hiding under a market wagon had kicked him, but here he was safe. He was the only person on the road, and the thorns on that bramble bush would stop Lawrence's laughing for some time anyway. Peter would sit here close to it by the roadside and laugh at him to his heart's content.
He took out the wand and waved it. "I wish Lawrence was in the middle of that bramble bush," he said.