Peter didn’t understand, but they let him see next morning—a puckered thing, wrapt in blue flannel, with the tiniest of hands, lying very close to Aunt Jehane’s breast. It was the funny man who showed him, lifting him up so he could look down on it. The funny man was happy.
Did he start asking questions at once, or does he only imagine it? Perhaps someone tried to explain things to him—it may have been his friend, the funny man. It may have been that he overheard conversations and misconstrued them. At all events, he knew that the baby was a girl and that she had come several weeks before she was expected. Someone said that Master Peter would never have been there had they known that this was going to happen.—So babies came from somewhere suddenly—somebody sent them! This was the beginning of his longing to have a baby all to himself—but how?
One fine morning the treacherous Grace arrived, not one little bit abashed. She told him that his mother was coming back to Topbury.
“Then am I the goodest little boy in the world?”
She thumped her great arms round him; he might have been her drum she was playing. “You can be when you like; and, my word, I believe you are now.”
He learnt before he left that the new baby was to be called “Riska”; and he noticed this much, that its hair and eyes were black.
His mother had lost her whiteness. Her face and hands were brown; only her hair was the old sweet color. He had not been long with her when he made his request. “Mummy, get Peterkins a baby.”
She was sitting sewing by the window. She looked up from the little garment she was making, holding the needle in her hand.
“What a funny present! Why does little Peter ask for that?”
“Mummy, where does babies come from?”