Harry, as a rule, was the initiator of their escapades; Peter championed them to a finish gamely. The mouth-organ boy walked through the world with a roving eye, seeking always new lands of innocent adventure. When he had almost come to shipwreck on some wild coast of whimsical absurdity, it was Peter who hurried to his rescue. The song which he had sung in the tree-tops of Friday Lane had been a prophecy. He still sang it in the austere city of gray walls and spires. It was a pæan of high spirits and irrepressible youth:

“I’ve been shipwrecked off Patagonia,

Home and Colonia,

Antipodonia;

I’ve shot cannibals,

Funny-looking animals,

Top-knot coons;

I’ve bought diamonds twenty a penny there,

I’ve been somewhere, nowhere, anywhere—

And I’m the wise, wise man of the wide, wide world.”