Partly because of her strength and partly because of her righteousness, she was allowed to carry the drum again and march in the front of the procession. Peter was impressed. After that when he had been impatient with God, he would seek forgiveness by declaring himself cleansed. He always thought that, following such confessions, the whistling came louder from the cupboard.
But it was Uncle Waffles who completed his information. At intervals he would come over to Topbury with Aunt Jehane. So far as the ladies were concerned, the talk was usually about their children. Aunt Jehane would rarely fail to mourn the fact that hers were both girls.
“Boys are different,” she would say; “you can turn them out to sink or swim. But girls! Sooner or later one has to get them married. It’s like my fortune to have two of them—the luck was with you from the first.”
Perhaps that was Jehane’s way of reminding Nan that she had given her husband only Peter. Waffles seemed to construe it in that light for, when she had repeated her complaint more than twice, he would tuck Peter under one arm and Glory under the other, and steal away to some hidden place where he could ask him funny questions. If he heard a cock crowing he would stop and inquire, “Why does the Doodle-do?”
The little boy almost always forgot the proper answer. Uncle Waffles would have to tell him, “Because he does, Peter.”
Peter soon learnt that Uncle Waffles had secrets as well, for, when he talked in the presence of his wife, he would hold his chin in his hand, so as to be able to slip his fingers quickly over his mouth if he found that unwise words were escaping. If he were too late in slipping up his fingers, she would say quite sharply, “Ocky, don’t be stupid. You’re no better than a child.”
It was because Uncle Waffles was no better than a child that Peter took courage to ask him, “How does people have babies?”
His uncle regarded him seriously a moment. “You’re very little to ask such questions. It’s a great secret. If I tell you, promise to keep it to yourself.”
When he had promised, his uncle whispered. And Peter knew that it was true, for he remembered that someone had been lazy and had had breakfast in bed before the coming of both Riska and Philip. So he learnt the last piece of witchcraft by which babies are induced to come into the world. From then on, until it happened, he was continually coaxing his mother not to get up to breakfast. One morning she took his advice; then he knew for certain that Uncle Waffles was very wise, even though Aunt Jehane did call him stupid.
For some time the whistling had been growing bolder: it would come out of the cupboard as though the angel were running; it would wander all over the house and meet him in the most unexpected places. When he was playing in the garden it would drift down to him from the tree-tops, “Coming, Peterkins. Coming.” It had grown quick like that, as though it, too, were impatient of waiting.